cambodian connections

This week I was busy at Konstepidemin. Heart warming meeting with Cambodians at Konstepidemin was one highlight. Meeting people doing so much from so little is inspiring.
Look here...
Reyum, such an important culture platform in Cambodia
The photos are from our trip to Pnom Penh a few years ago. How I wish to come back.

Having 40 visitors at Konstepidemin and managing a full day program for them in artists' studios and lectures on Wednesday, was fun too and took some time to prepare.

real water lilies

Here's the real lotus thing. In Cambodia lotus fruits are sold at the market and eaten as snacks. The stems are chopped and made soup of. Tasty and beautiful at the same time.

And the water lilies are folded beautifully like this before put as offers in the temples.

A few Cambodian artists:
Sopheap Pich, rattan sculptures, added to my favorites

Anders Jirås, friend and phographer living in Phnom Penh, revamped his web site. Traditional Khmer dance and much more:
"Cambodian artists speak out" interviews with artists dealing with the Khmer Rouge and genocide era in their art (artist portraits by Anders), the publication can be downloaded (PDF)

Heng Sinith, photography
Linda Saphan, art of herself and others, cultural projects
Article about contemporary Cambodian art life

Mosaic preparations in progress, will show tomorrow. Hope you'll have a great work week!

krama scarves

What a nice surprise today! Had lunch with Anders Jirås, photographer friend who moved to Pnom Penh, Cambodia some months ago. He is on a short visit in Göteborg and brought me presents, look!

Cambodian kramas, the most useful cotton scarves you can think of.
My potter colleague on the photo wears it right, photo from a few years ago.

Anders photos from Phnom Penh, besides the beautiful dancers look at:
Amazing Panorama of the Brayuvangs Pagoda
Kite festival

Kramas with a song:

Cambodian coincidences

Are there really any coincidences?

1. I'm reading a book by a Swedish journalist, Jesper Huor "Sista resan till Phnom Penh". He tells the story of his father, a Cambodian intellectual who left his Swedish wife and son to join the Cambodian revolution when Jesper was only two years old. As a grown up and journalist he investigates what happened to his father and meet his Cambodian relatives.

For the first time I think I get a glimpse of understanding of what happened, how Khmer rouge could kill millions of Cambodians in the 70s. One of them was Jesper's father, who died in Tuol Sleng, a prison only a handful of prisoners survived.

2. Jumped here and there on internet and stumbled over a ghostlike image of a prisoner in Tuol Sleng. It's not Jesper's father, just one of the thousands and thousands of prisoner portraits later found in the archives from hell. But it could have been.

The artist's name is Binh Danh, a Vietnamese refugee who lived in America since he was two years. He uses a clorophyll process to transfer and fix the images on leafs, breathtakingly beautiful and very sad. The photo on my computer screen was "The Botany of Tuol Sleng #11, 2006" .

Found a video interview with Binh Danh and more images here and here.
Photo above is my own from a few years back, shows the original Tuol Sleng portraits.

3. An email came from the people behind the movie Holly, that opens Nov 9 in America (shown at the Göteborg film festival here, a fiction). They are asking for all kinds of support for the film and for the work against sex exploitation of children, huge business in Cambodia. I signed up at the Red light children-site initiated by the film's producer, that's why I got the mail.


Phnom Penh architecture from the sixties

4. My brave photographer friend Anders Jirås moved to Cambodia last week. Email from Pnom Penh yesterday, everything is fine. I hope he will start a blog! It would bring us dance and theatre experiences and his lovely photography.

So many good people work mending a broken country!

lotus flowers

Lotus flower arrangements, for sale outside temple in Phnom Penh a few years ago.

Photo from Sintra webpage

Marianne Hallberg, blue and white lotus flowers at Sintra, Göteborg.

Lotus mosaic and a wonderful world of mosaic creations at Make Mine Mosaic.

My show in Örebro is still here.