Year Title
2022 Waiting for Enlightenment
2022 Two Hearts
2021 Losing My Religion
2020 if we want it
2017 Holiday in Cambodia
2017 A single journey can change the course of a life
2016 Idol/Idle
Year Title
2022 Waiting for Enlightenment
2022 Two Hearts
2021 Losing My Religion
2020 if we want it
2017 Holiday in Cambodia
2017 A single journey can change the course of a life
2016 Idol/Idle
រង់ចាំចូលនិព្វាន
Distillery Gallery (Boston, MA)
Curated by Shane Levi
June 1 – July 9, 2022
(Catalog)
INSTALLATION VIEWS
រង់ចាំចូលនិព្វាន Waiting for Enlightenment, Distillery Gallery, Boston, 2022. (Credit: Mel Taing)
Comprising drawings, paintings, artist books, and video, Sam’s work traces cultural hybridity, queer futurity, religious iconography, and the fraught political history between the United States and Cambodia. Born a child refugee in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide, Sam positions the exhibition as an embodied site for individual and collective searching. Crawling out of an existential fever dream, the serpent becomes an avatar cruising through liminal spaces of belonging, spirituality, and utopia — birthed again and again through cycles of displacement, loss, and love.
ចិត្តពីរ
(Video) (Credit)
INSTALLATION VIEWS
ចិត្តពីរ (Two Hearts), 2022. One-channel video (color, sound; 2 min.) and gold plastic home shrine, dimensions variable.
To reframe the spectacle of the child–animal pairing as mere curiosity, I draw on motifs of sentimentalism and vernacular Theravada Buddhism via the pop ballad Two Hearts by Khmer artist Sokmean (a cover of the original Thai version) through lyric captions/translations and rhythmic editing. Installed on a CRT monitor set on a home shrine, the piece focalizes the fragile bonds of human–nonhuman kinship amid perceived danger (predator/prey) and considers how our gazes are shaped by the circulation of images of children from the Global South.
ការបាត់បង់សាសនារបស់ខ្ញុំ
Minnesota Museum of American Art (St Paul, MN)
Curated by Suriya Sam-Khuth
October 30, 2021 – January 19, 2022
(Video) (Catalog)
INSTALLATION VIEW
Losing My Religion, 2021. Sutures, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St Paul, MN, 2021. (Credit: Drew Arrieta)
Multi-channel video with projection mapping onto plinths and objects (HD video, sound; 5 minutes), dimensions variable.
From afar, the work appears as if someone has left all the living room TVs turned on; as if they were flipping through the channels trying to find themselves reflected on the screen. A closer look reveals a collection of videos that Sam has woven into objects found in everyday Cambodian households — កន្ទេល kanteil (leisure mats), ខ្នើយ khnaəy (ornate silk pillows), ភួយ phuəy (blankets), ចានស្រាក់ caan sraak (tiffin carriers) and temple trays. By embedding popular imagery directly onto quotidian objects, Sam begins to reflect on the ways in which moving image and visual culture becomes a point of departure for cultural transmission and diasporic assemblages .
Text by Suriya Sam-Khuth
Collaboration with Melissa Q. Teng
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
Curated by Boston CyberArts
June 24 – October 1, 2020
(Video) (Credits)
INSTALLATION VIEWS
if we want it, 2020. Multi-channel video on digital display (HD color, silent; 00:30 seconds), 80 foot tall LED marquee.
Art on the Marquee (31st Round), Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 2020. (Credit: Mel Taing)
In this work titled if we want it, we share Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s framing of survival as collaboration. Tsing writes: “... staying alive—for every species—requires livable collaborations. Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination” (2016). In this spirit, the piece collages together examples of symbiosis: a polyculture farm, coral reef ecosystem, impala and red-billed oxpecker, surfer and ocean.
Formally, we are inspired by Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s WAR IS OVER (if you want it) billboard campaign (1969), in which they aimed to commodify and sell peace, co-opting the language of politicians, companies, and celebrities. At the top of our piece, a running marquee advertises “Survival is collaboration,” in the 6 most common languages of Boston Public Schools: English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Cantonese, and Vietnamese. Each translator works their own meaning into this phrase (“Everyone is treated like family.” / “You can’t do it alone.” / “Life engages in cooperation with the earth.”), sometimes consulting parents or friends. Through this process, translations become an exercise in drawing worlds together. In contrast, we write “if we want it” only in English, the top global business language ranked by the International Monetary Fund in 2018, to question who is included and excluded in the “we” in regards to influence and major decisions affecting our survival.
By Melissa Q. Teng and Sopheak Sam
ការឆ្លងទៅកម្ពុជា
(Video)
INSTALLATION VIEWS
Holiday in Cambodia, 2018. Multichannel video with projection mapping (color, sound; 5:00 minutes).
The archival videos are projection mapped onto an assemblage of plinths that are collapsed onto each other, alluding to ancient ruins like Angkor Wat and Preah Vihear. The arrangement of the white plinths destabilizes this notion of a Modernist structure that stores cultural objects, and posits gallery spaces, heritage sites, and museums as containers of cultural extraction.
ការដំណើរតែមួយអាចផ្លាស់ប្តូរផ្លូវជីវិតយើង
2017
INSTALLATION VIEW
A single journey can change the course of a life, 2017-ongoing. Four-channel video with CRT monitors and projection (color, sound; 2:47 minutes).
A single journey can change the course of a life, 2017-ongoing. Four-channel video with CRT monitors and projection (color, sound; 2:47 minutes).
“I came to this country and I fell in love with its people and learned its history... This country, for me was my awakening.”
– Angelina Jolie (BBC, February 2017)
This video installation is an exploration of my fascination with Angelina Jolie as a UN ambassador, celebrity humanitarian, and the adoptive mother of a Cambodian son.
– Angelina Jolie (BBC, February 2017)
This video installation is an exploration of my fascination with Angelina Jolie as a UN ambassador, celebrity humanitarian, and the adoptive mother of a Cambodian son.
តំណាង/ទំនេរ
2016
(Video)
INSTALLATION VIEW
Idol/Idle, 2016. Two-channel video (color, sound; 15 minutes) on CRT monitors, dimensions variable.
The left subtitles are part of the original documentary translation, while the right subtitles are back-translated from English to Khmer to English—through Google Translate, an online tool I often use to communicate with my non-English speaking parents.