(suspenseful music) (indistinct student chatter) - Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(audience applauding) - Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Christina Hamilton, the series director, and today we are thrilled to present sculptor, and foremost contemporary artists of Cambodia, Sopheap Pich.

A big thank you to our presenting partner, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA, and please note brand new logo for UMMA just unveiled.

They've been an integral part of realizing this moment today, and we thank them.

And also our series partners, Detroit Public Television, PBS Books, and Michigan Public.

This program today is part of Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia, which is a special exhibition, which will open at the University of Michigan Museum of Art on Saturday, this coming Saturday in a couple days and run through July.

This is a group exhibition bringing together 80 works of art spanning a millennium to present how visual culture of Cambodia and its diaspora has changed in the face of upheavals, and the exhibition features two works by our distinguished guests today.

So many generous donors have helped to make the exhibition and this programming possible.

And while you can find a complete list of donors on UMMA's website, which is also new and you should go check it out, we do want to recognize a few folks here today, Mark and Julie Phillips, the U of M Provost and President, the Ross School of Business History of Art, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and Asian Languages and Cultures.

So please do check out all the other folks that have... You know, it really takes a lot to bring a big show with all this work here, and to bring Sopheap all the way from Cambodia to us, so big thank you to all of those folks.

We will have our regular Q and A today, and here you may have noticed there's a microphone at the end of this aisle, there's a microphone at the end of the aisle there.

When we get to that point after the presentation, you can line up at each of these two microphones, and Sopheap will answer your questions.

And now for a proper introduction of our speaker, we are pleased to have with us the guest curator of the Angkor Complex Exhibition.

He is an associate professor here at the University of Michigan in the Department of the History of Art, and he studies South Asian Himalayan and Southeast Asian art, architecture, and visual culture, and has been in involved with projects at many museums.

Please welcome to the stage Dr. Nachiket Chanchani.

(audience applauding) - Good evening everyone.

Thank you Christina, for your kind introduction.

And thank you everyone for joining us for a lecture by Sopheap Pich, Cambodia's foremost contemporary artist.

The rewards of looking at Sopheap Pich's artwork, and listening to his words are many.

Consider the lessons that I learned when I visited Pich's home and studio in Battambang in May, 2022.

Walking through his garden, he led me to five ghost gray metallic trees, each tree was created from scores of flattened aluminum sheets, first pressed together against the trunk of a dead tree, then gently hammered to raise, to depress, and to push aside the metal without removing any of the surface to capture the unique texture of the buck, and finally, by soldiering the sheets together.

These were trees only in name, they had neither extensive roots nor sap, moreover, their branches were little more than stumps.

They were also bereft of a canopy of leaves, flowers, and fruit.

When I asked Pich to describe these sculptures, he called them, and I quote him, "The skin of trees."

Pich's, cryptic phrase, encourages us to regard his work as less concerned with human exceptionalism, and more with the materiality and with the vulnerable beings that are composed of inside and outsides.

Pich's words also prompt us to see his works as more than an aesthetic response to the Anthropocene, and to look very carefully at his artworks and the ecology, herein lies the power to move us.

Having given you a sense of the importance of Pich's vision and his voice, let me briefly summarize some of his better known accomplishments.

Pich grew up in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, an incredibly violent period that left no household unscarred, and a quarter of the country's population dead.

In 1979 when the genocidal regime was ousted, Pich and his family were able to flee to Thailand.

They spent four years in refugee camps before immigrating to the United States.

Shortly after receiving an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999, Pich turned his attention to sculpture, and eventually returned to Cambodia in 2002.

There he began working with local materials, gathered from his surroundings, and reflecting on the borders of history, and memory, and nature, and culture.

He also began thinking about his studio as a space for playfully reordering forms, and for laborious experimentation.

Since then, Pich's artworks have been collected and shown in many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Center George Pompidou in Paris, and the National Gallery in Singapore, as well as many international exhibitions, including the 57th Venice Biennale, Documenta 13 in Kassel, the Gwangju Biennale among others.

Much more could be said, but I now turn the podium to Sopheap Pich.

Please join me in welcoming him, and please give him your wrapped attention, thank you.

(audience applauding) - Hello everyone.

- [Audience Members] Hello (indistinct).

- [Audience Members] Hello.

- Thank you all for being here.

Pardon me, I'm a little bit emotional.

Thank you for kind introduction, Nachiket and Carolyn.

Thank you, the University of Michigan for inviting me here, also for putting together this amazing show.

Cambodia is a small country, and being an artist in Cambodia is even smaller in the world, so I'm very honored.

The Guggenheim Museum, I believe the Guggenheim Water Metropolitan Museum asked me about three years ago when the pandemic was beginning to happen, and a lot of anger and animosity was being expressed on Asian people.

And they asked me to write a couple of lines to say how I feel about the situation.

That took me a few days to think about, how do you encapsulate something in a few lines?

But the word that came to my mind all the time was gratitude.

I feel extreme gratitude for having been lucky enough to live a big part of my life, my educated life here in Massachusetts and Chicago, and a few other cities.

And I feel that if I didn't get that chance to be living here in the US, I would never be able to live this little dream of a life that I'm living.

So at that point, I forgot about the question, and I just said, "It's gratitude, I feel lucky to be here."

And I feel, at this time, that a lot of the noise and everything that's going on, sometime I wonder how many people who lives here actually feel this sense of gratitude.

I'm not a political artist, so I will preface my talk with that, thank you.

So I am 52 years old, I've been making art for 20 odd years, being a sculptor.

I returned to Cambodia in 2004, and prior to that I was a painter.

When I came back to Cambodia, I felt that painting was difficult.

It didn't reflect the condition, oops, the condition of where I live.

So somehow, I turned to sculpture by just complete coincidence.

And my work, as you will see through the talk, has a lot to do with nature, the way that nature have taught me, sort of the mystery of life, the unknown, the freedom, the limitation, the vulnerability.

So you will see that my work is not, they don't tend to have eyes, or nose, or speech, or visible sign of a language.

This is my very first sculpture.

It's called Silence, it's made with rattan and metal wires.

This is me in 2004 making this first piece, I felt so liberated, I felt like I was a child, like I was making a toy.

It was something very different for me because, you know, being a painter, I was always thinking about what do I want to say?

What is painting?

Well, the history of painting is long, and the actual technique is so difficult.

You learn the technique and then you go, "What do you say with it?"

And at that point I felt like maybe I don't need to say anything, but how can you paint if you don't wanna say anything?

So this is where I experimented with rattan for the first time, simply because there were shops that were making furniture all around me because at the time I was very poor.

I mean, two years into living in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh the capital.

A lot of people around me were making furniture, so I said, "I cannot just buy a few rattan from you."

And so I made this sculpture, and then I made my second sculpture by the encouragement of a very beautiful man, the director of the French Cultural Center in the city who came to see me.

For the first time I've never had anyone that important came to see me, so he saw that one sculpture, and he said, "This sculpture gives me goosebumps," the one I show you before.

And he said, this is, to him this is the first modern art he's ever seen in Cambodia.

My head was spinning, I didn't know what he was talking about.

But he said, "If you want to pursue this direction," he will help me, he will buy some photograph of mine, he will try to get me some money from the French government, so that I can live for maybe three or four months, and go deeper into this activity.

And I took him up on it, his name Guy Issanjou So this is called Cycle.

So the first sculpture was about, basically a form of a pair of lungs.

And this sculpture is based on two stomachs, stomachs.

At one point I decided to connect them together.

And so that's where I was working.

And so one is the inside of the body kind of nature, and then another is the outside nature.

So I was looking at flowers, and I was thinking about this plant called the Morning Glory, because we eat Morning Glory all the time, almost every meal because it's a cheap plant.

And this particular plant during the Khmer Rouge, every Cambodian that was living during the Khmer Rouge eat this plant simply because it just grows everywhere.

But we don't eat the flour, and normally people don't look at the flour because it's just a lowly plant, you know, and the flower's not important, so.

Then I made this sculpture, and I started with the flower, and I made the rest.

And by this time I had around six assistants, so when you make big things like this, I found out that with the second sculpture, I had one assistant that was shaving the rattan, and then I built the sculpture.

And that was very limiting because it take many, many, many weeks to finish one thing.

So anytime I was economically better off, I would use the money to hire people to work with me.

And I made some smaller works as well, and then this piece happened, I was asked to be in the Triennial in Queensland, Australia.

It was my very first sort of introduction to a very big exhibition.

So my contribution was a sculptural installation that was called 1979, which is based on a journey, a short journey that my family took from the Khmer Rouge Camp to the provincial town, the center of the province of Battambang where I grew up during the Khmer Rouge, and where I was born.

This sculpture of the Buddha was not intended to be left this way, but it happened that after I made it up to the shoulder, I felt this is probably enough.

And I got some good feedback from a few friends, good friends that I knew, who were very touched by it, so I said, "Okay."

The tip of the strands on the bottom is dipped in red India ink.

And a couple years later, I end up, I said to, "Well, I made that, "so what if I make a, you know, another one "that is a full body, "which is a basically take the model "of a ready-made like a bronze, not ready-made, "but I mean, it's a bronze tourist kind of a sculpture, "and then make it just like that."

It turned out that I had this work in a show and my father, who, you know, all my school years and childhood life didn't want me to be an artist, but said to me that I can be either be a monk or a doctor, (audience laughing) like for life, if I were a monk for life, it's just as happy as I've a doctor for life, but not an artist.

But when he saw this, and he's a Buddhist, he built temples, and everywhere he goes, he want to build a community, he built temples everywhere.

And of course, when he saw this, he was so happy.

He actually had this in his, when I went back to the US to visit him, he had it on his computer screensaver.

- [Audience Members] Aw!

- Of me making it actually.

- [Audience Members] Aw!

- So that was a moment.

And I made other flower, this is called a cannonball flower in Khmer in a Cambodian language we call it the Rang Phnom Flower.

And this is maybe the biggest flower that I've ever made, probably the most complex.

That flower is gonna be shown at the Diriyah Biennale next month in Saudi Arabia.

And I'm interested in nature, not just its volume, not just its form, but also its details.

I look at lines because my work is lines, my bamboo, my rattan is, I'm basically building lines in space.

So here I'm looking at something like a clam shell, and I'm seeing the lines and I said, "This is really beautiful, how do I capture this?

"How do I make line that is made by nature, "and not by a brush?"

So then I started making a impression with bamboo sticks because when you tear the bamboo, it has its sort of unique quality, let's say.

And I mix the ink, kind of watercolor with my own mixture of different pigment, and gum Arabic, and water, so to get it to a certain consistency and then pressuring it on watercolor paper a certain way, a certain composition.

And here's the first, let's say mature one I made called Infra.

And by this time I was very influenced by music as I'm working, so "Infra" was an album by Max Richter.

So it's a very spacious, you know, flat, very, very repetitive and slow kind of music.

I think it's called Neoclassical Music.

And this is a big piece, almost two meters long.

And subsequently, I begin to think more about lines and how when you look at my work, you see the lines and not the form so much, but sort of look closer.

So this one's called Arboretum, and I'll just go through these images without having to explain every one of them.

So they're quite large, I mean, they're full size kind of sculpture painting.

I call them sculpture, some people call paintings, but they're really flat sculptures.

And I use burlap, and here's my first painting that I do that is black.

You know, my teachers always said, "Don't use black "because black takes in the light, "and it kills all other color because it's so strong."

So here I am using charcoal mixed with beeswax and damar resin, which is a technical encaustic, those of you who are artists you know this technique, it's made famous by Jasper Johns.

But it's a very ancient technique, you see, the ancient Greek used this technique.

This is more recent work, it was just two years ago.

This is all bamboo torched to get it to that black, and then chipped away by their notes.

You know, bamboo have sections, and they're call notes where it's solid.

So I chip away the notes to reveal the color of the bamboo itself.

This is called Nocturne, this is Nocturne number two.

And at this time I'm listening to classical music, as you could probably guess.

Chopin, Chopin's Nocturne compositions, because I'm now, the last two years I have began to learn how to play the guitar.

So I know that classical music is very important to Western culture in terms of whatever music that comes out afterward has a lot to do with classical compositions.

This one is called Fleeting Voices, and I began to use some rosewood sticks that has been growing in my garden.

This one I use antique wood on one side and bamboo on another side, and those little spots are, I'd say Buffalo hide, Buffalo skin, which we use to make drums and different musical instruments, mostly drums.

This is all aluminum, I began to use aluminum that is thrown away, that is ready to get melted down, recycled, so called.

I'm interested in the used quality, there certain patina, certain holes and coloration that is made by, I mean, made but not really wanting to be made, (chuckles) let's say, because if there's a lot of this black, it means it's very old and they're gonna throw it away.

So I wanna take these things and confront it, and appreciate it for the fact that they are thrown away.

This one is called Painted Air.

This one is called Shoreline Crest, this is two meters, which is, I don't know how many feet that is, four feet, I wanna say four and a half, something like that.

(indistinct speech from audience members) - Sorry, six?

(audience laughing) - [Audience Member] No.

- Sorry, I can't convert, yeah.

So this is also two meters, this is called the High Plains.

It reminds me of the desert, like in those western movies.

And then that circle that you saw in the last painting is the lid of the cooking, like a strainer on top, like I think they make buns, like they steam buns with it.

But these are the circles on the bottom of the cooking pots.

So I thought, wouldn't it be fun to just make the bottom, of the cooking pot become a work of art?

So I do nothing except just cut them down, and then cut around them to fit them like a puzzle.

So it's not layering on top of each other, it's a cutting around them so that they all fit comfortably.

So these are really brand new works, they're called Drop Accumulation 'cause it reminds me of rainfalls.

So every year it seems like I'm always going back to nature for inspiration.

And these seeds is a type of rosewood that is grown in Southeast Asia.

And in Cambodia especially, we use this wood a lot.

Now there's less and less of them because people cut them down.

Because at one point, or let's say the last 30 years, it's been easy to cut them down.

Now we don't really see them in the wild anymore, except where temples are, and people protect them.

But I plant them in my garden and they produce these fruits, so I've been making works with them.

This is already, I think this work is maybe already 10 years ago, experimenting with different kind of rocks, sometime I find them when I travel, sometime, you know, I buy them from people who sells rocks.

So like sandstone, different kind of marbles.

We don't have very good marbles in Cambodia, it's usually just stone.

So this one is called Big Seed.

This one is at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

So then I wanna make a giant one, this is about six meters long, which is about the length of a shipping container.

And I wanna make a work that is big, but then using the smallest strand I could possibly can, which is like a smaller than a chopstick.

And some people thought that I use bronze, but it's actually 100% bamboo.

So this work fits right into a container, but on a diagonal because it's a bit tall this way, so it has to lay this way.

I just thought it's kind of funny to do something like that.

And that's, yeah, kind of a side view, so it's taller than me by a few meters, a couple of meters.

(audience laughing) And this is, I began working with glass about two years ago.

Again, the French Cultural Center invited me to go to France, to go to this ancient glass manufacturing experimental foundry.

And not having too many ideas as I am, I resort again to the Rosewood seed after having experimented with many, many other forms.

So these are all hand-blown.

So that particular piece, the necklace, I call it the amulet 'cause it's based on an amulet, it's like a good luck charm.

It's a little bit more complicated, but yeah, I won't say too much about it, it's gonna be shown at the Diriyah Biennale, yeah, next month.

So in this case, I don't do anything except plan, and look, and tell other people what to do, which is kind of nice (chuckles).

(audience laughing) And you know, glass is very special.

Seed parts, once again, this is of the a tree called the Ordeal.

Yeah, I found them in Singapore, there's a story behind it too, but I won't go into it.

I did some small drawing, and then I made a bigger one.

It seems to be a kind of thing for me to make something big, it's just like, I just, yeah, I like doing that.

You know, it's something to do with your body.

When you make something big, you live in a different way, you feel something very different.

And I guess maybe another reason for it is because I'm in Cambodia and nobody know where it is.

(chuckles) So if I show a big piece among other artists, then it doesn't really matter if they want to like it, or know what it's about, they can't avoid seeing it, so.

So this is a piece I made for a friend of mine who has a hotel in Siem Reap, if anybody ever go to Cambodia and visit Siem Reap, this one is in a place called Treeline Hotel.

And this is again, the Rosewood seed, but it's the part now, which is also very beautiful.

So this is a work from, yeah, well, 10 years ago, or something.

This is another.

So the solid part is covered with goat hide.

This is a piece inspired by the kapok tree, which is like a cotton tree.

In Asia we use this because it's very common, and it grows very fast.

And we use it for pillows, and blankets, and things like that.

So it's an old boat, and then I simply add on the sort of the cotton pad on top, at least, my interpretation of it.

This place called Monument, I think it's in the show, I think, you'll find out tomorrow.

- [Audience Member] Yep.

- So stone, sandstone, which is a very traditional material for Cambodian sculptures.

So finally I get to use a traditional material in a sense that art is, that is used for art.

And the Rain Tree on the bottom, Rain Tree can grow very fast, and it's not illegal to cut.

They don't mind if you cut a Rain Tree down, so they're quite common.

On the top of it is a spiral shape of a rattan.

So I combine the three, you have to carve it to sit the rattan inside the sandstone, which was a bit complicated, but you know, we figure it out.

This is my farm, you know, I got lucky and I traded a couple of sculptures for a friend of mine who owned a big piece of land, and he was German doctor, so yeah, he wasn't gonna make a farm out of it, so he said, "Well, why don't you take it, "and I'll take a couple of your sculptures."

So he's a doctor of skin, so I just happened to made a sculpture of a hair strand, like a piece of hair in bamboo.

So he took that one and a rosewood, one of those rosewood sculpture in stone that you saw earlier.

There's a river to cross to get to the farm, so we had to build a bridge.

And that's the gate, as you see in the distance, there's a bridge.

This is my staff, this is my sculpture staff.

And now we are farming (laughs).

(audience laughing) I'm not sure how they like it, somebody has to do it.

We're planting coconuts.

This is about a year or two ago.

This is about six months ago.

This is what it is now.

It's producing fruits, it's already four and a half years, so we are actually beginning to sell some coconuts.

We're not making any money from it, we're saving it like in a piggy bank.

This is my staff, he's the most loyal person.

He drives me around when I need him, he also take care of the farm.

So he's saving the money from selling the coconut, he's gonna buy some cows with it.

So maybe next year I will have some cows.

(audience laughing) So having a farm in the mountains, I get to come very close to big trees.

On my farm, there's also a lot of big trees, but there are trees that, you know, dies, maybe lightning hit them, things like that, or people cut them.

So this one was basically right, it's the path that leads to my farm.

And then one day I saw it like this, someone cut it, and then a week later the tree was gone.

So I get very...

I'm pained, you know, when people cut down trees.

So I said to myself, "Well, it's an old story to blame people "that have to make a living this way."

You know, being, I mean, this is desperation, I mean, it's not legal, first of all to cut trees, secondly to steal trees, but this is what people do.

But I thought instead of feeling pain, what can I do about trees?

What can I do?

What can I do to make up for this pain?

What can I do?

I start making sculptures that uses, I'm going a little fast here, but I'm trying to get to this point where I'm making trees, but I'm going to a little too fast, sorry.

This are things from the farm, these are bamboo pieces that, you know, when you clear the land, you get all sorts of bamboo.

Some pieces of bamboo grow this way, it's pretty crazy.

I have to connect two pieces together to make it all look like this, but it was almost finished already.

It's almost like this in nature, finish.

So here we are.

So making sculptures of trees, it is a very laborious process as Professor Nachiket was saying in an introduction.

It's beating metal with a hammer around a tree, and then taking it apart piece by piece, and then put them back together piece by piece with grommets, like the word is rivets, you know, it's not a nail, it's like a staple.

So this is one species of three, it's a myrtle in English.

Well, there's many different kind of myrtles, but this particular myrtle's grow in Cambodia.

It's buck, it's a very silky and white.

And I try to plant these trees, but it didn't grow because they take it from the jungle, I guess, and then they cut the root and the branches, and they put in the ground, and you know, sometime they do grow, but most of the time they don't because they're wild tree, and they take many years to get this big.

So I made this sculpture, it's called La Danse, and it's based on a Matisse, you know, the Matisse painting with the five dancers.

And this was shown at the Gwangju Biennale in Korea.

Now, this piece, I don't have a title for it yet, I just finished it before I came.

And it's a vine that I bought when I first built my studio 12 years ago, 10 years, 11, 12 years ago.

And it's just been sitting, first of all, sitting outside for a long time, and now it's was sitting inside.

And then finally we made it, the same technique.

I mean, it's obviously very much more laborious and complex because of all that twisting and turning.

So when I say pots and pans, these are the pots and pans.

And I'll just go through these images, it's now we are at a stage where we are talking about process and my team, so I won't say too much, I'll just go.

So you see where we work.

We used to cut our own bamboo, and now we are making more sculptures, so we are buying bamboo.

This is the Mekong River, and they float this down and we go, and we select them, and then we bring them back to the studio.

We wash them if they're dirty, and then we prepare.

We're boiling rattan in a diesel oil because it takes away the sugar content and water, and it makes them stronger.

So these are just...

So these guy's been with me for 15 years.

So we have a family of nine, then we have a cook and a gardener as well.

And so I have a pretty big team, I have to say, I'm lucky.

I think this is the last slide in the presentation.

This is me working.

There you go.

(audience applauding) I am happy to take any questions you may have.

(indistinct audience chatter) And thank you for having the patience to listen (chuckles).

Yeah, it's finished (indistinct).

- You did, so thank you so much, that was so amazingly interesting, such beautiful work.

Well, folks, as we can see, people are lining up here, and I'll hand this to you and say how this time we have.

Okay.

Sir, go for it.

(audience member speaking in foreign language) (Sopheap speaking in foreign language) - I couldn't find a picture of Conch's Flight what is all that about?

- [Sopheap] I'm sorry?

- Conch's Flight.

- Conch's Flight?

- [Audience Member] Yes.

- [Sopheap] It's a painting.

- Oh, I couldn't find a picture of it.

Can you explain it or give me a, what it's about?

- [Sopheap] But that was a painting I did when I was a student.

- Yes, that's why I couldn't find anything about it.

- Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not known for painting when I was a student.

So I think you'd have a hard time finding it, yeah.

- Okay, I guess we'll leave it at that.

(Sopheap laughing) Also in Battambang there's a sculpture of a man with a stick, but he has a black face.

How is that explained?

What is that about?

- [Sopheap] I think it's some fairy tale that have to do with Battambang.

- But why black face?

- [Sopheap] I don't know.

- Couple of mysteries.

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

- [Sopheap] You're welcome.

Yeah, sorry, you're next (chuckles).

- Hi, thank you very much for speaking tonight.

My question is about your piece, you talked about like where it fit diagonally in the shipping container.

I'm really curious, how did you achieve like the overlap between the two big forms?

Like in the bamboo, it seems like they overlap.

- Well, it goes like this.

So you build this and then you build one more around it.

- [Audience Member] Oh, okay, very cool.

- So it doesn't come apart, it's just one piece, yeah.

- Yeah, thank you, that's so cool.

- (laughs) You're welcome.

- Yeah, I'm supposed to do this, right?

Okay.

- I mean I don't.

- Go ahead, ask, ask, ask away.

- Whenever I look at your sculptures, I think about the light and like shadows, because that's also it's own separate piece of art, right?

Like, if you move the light.

Do you consciously think of when it's going to be shown where the lights are going to be placed?

Like it's huge, right?

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- So I could focus either on your sculpture, or it's shadow, or it's multiple shadows.

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- Do you have an active part in placing the lights around your sculptures?

- [Sopheap] No (laughs).

I make objects, and then better with lights, they surprise me.

I like looking at them too, but I can't really design it like that, you know, 'cause I kind of work as... Yeah, I don't think about that, no, no.

- [Audience Member] Okay, thank you.

- But gladly other people do.

Thank you.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- (laughs) Yes.

- Hi, I have more of a practical question, I guess.

- [Sopheap] Okay.

- The professor in the beginning said that you went to Chicago Institute of Art for your master's degree.

How did you like your experience, and would you recommend a master's for a senior that's gonna graduate this year?

- Great question.

(audience laughing) I absolutely do recommend, yes, wholeheartedly.

I think choosing to do art is a very difficult proposition.

I don't know how people do it, it's incredibly difficult to find time, to have space, for your parents to allow you to do it.

(audience member laughing) So when you get to that point where you can at least go forward with it, without somebody stopping you, I think you should go to the end, and just get the most of the education that you can, then you have the rest of your life to suffer.

(audience laughing) - [Audience Member] Thank you for sharing.

- You're welcome.

- Hi, can you hear me?

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- I don't think so.

Oh, hi, hi.

- [Sopheap] Okay.

- I'm a student here and also I'm in sculpture, and I also wanna be a Buddhist monk.

- [Sopheap] You what?

- I also wanna be a Buddhist monk, if that doesn't work out, artist (laughs).

- [Sopheap] Oh, okay, well, my father likes that, yeah.

- Okay, so first of all, how's your experience as like an artist making sculpture, and about your Buddhist first piece, like the Buddha piece, like a halfway done piece, when do you think your sculpture is finished?

And how do you finish?

- Oh, yeah, no, that's a great question.

I like finished work.

You know, I think, I like things that are done with care, right?

And to me, you bring it to the end, you bring it to a stage where you can't do anymore to it, or take anything more away from it.

So in the end, it's about your emotional state when you get to that point.

Because if something is not enough, you know it.

You just hopefully, you know, in your clearest moment you know it.

So that Buddha means something, you know, it means destruction, or it means something is wrong.

It means something is incomplete, so that's what it is, you know?

And then other things is wholesome because that's what it wants to be, you know?

I guess, yeah, does that answer it?

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- Sir.

- Hi (indistinct) Sopheap - Hi, (laughs).

- We met in 2005, my name is Trent.

- Yes, Trent, Trent, yes.

- Good to see you.

- At the moment, I teach classes on Buddhism and Southeast Asian literature at the university.

And sometimes I like to show pictures of your art, and of other Southeast Asian artists in that context because it's so productive for the students to think with.

And they make really interesting kinds of connections, like for reading traditional Cambodian literature or literature about Buddhism.

And then they see pictures of your art, they make all these connections.

And I always assume, this is just what happens in the classroom, these are the kinds of intellectual connections that get made.

But when you make art, when you make it in Cambodia, do you feel that those connections might be there between Cambodian literature, or religion and music, and the kinds of things you make because you're living in that space, even if it's subconscious?

- Yeah.

- Or would you say it's just a coincidence that the students, they see these kinds of connections?

- Oh, what a great question.

That's why you're a professor, and I'm not.

(audience laughing) Look, I think I'm still thinking that art is about hope, you know, and art is about connection, right?

You know, to me what I experienced when I was living here, and seeing different museums, and when I travel, and I don't need to understand art, you know, I just need to be affected by it, you know?

And I'm a young artist, you know, I don't have like a complete knowledge of my own work, you know?

But I'm always hoping that there is such a thing as some sort of universal, I don't know, universal vibration, maybe.

Because when I listen to music, I also don't understand music, I have no clue about music structure, about how there's a minor key or major key, and how you're supposed to feel.

And I just listen to something and go, "That's really good," you know?

So I still feel like art has the ability to connect people universally.

You know, I think when I was a student, there was this sort of debate in class that there's no such thing as universality in art.

I don't know, that seems to me a bit pessimistic, you know?

Because every culture have art, right?

And when you break it down to its bare minimum, bare structure, it's a lot similar to each other.

So couldn't we say that there is some universality quality in art, right?

I mean, you are a western guy, I remember I met you in Cambodia, and you were singing (indistinct), you're like the best (indistinct) singer I've ever heard.

And I was just like, wow, this guy is singing my language, you know, this amazingly spiritual music, right?

Which is a lot of voice, a lot of, you know, tone.

So, yeah, I don't know, I guess that answered it, no?

- Oh absolutely, thanks so much.

- [Sopheap] You're welcome.

- I appreciate it.

- Yes.

- [Audience Member] So my question was, what inspired you to be an artist or a sculptor?

- Hmm.

I guess I knew I didn't wanna be like a conventional, I didn't wanna walk the conventional path, you know, I mean, if I admire musicians, and poets, and writers, and cinema, and paintings, and sculptures, and then everyone tells me that if you do that, that you're just gonna be a miserable person, right?

Because you're not gonna make it, like what?

Oh, I'll tell you a story.

(audience laughing) So my father pulled me to the side one time, said to me, "Son, do you know this great artist in Cambodia "with just one paintbrush and one color, he just does this."

He said, "Does this.

"Do you know what he look like when he does this?"

I said, "No, I don't know, I can't tell."

He said, "The most beautiful picture of a cat running, "the most amazing, like lifelike photographic like."

I was like, "Oh wow, okay."

He said, "Do you know that artist?

"Do you know who that artist is?"

I said, "No."

He said, "Exactly, you can be a genius, "and nobody know who you are," Woo, yeah.

So I think, you know, why I choose to be an artist?

I don't wanna think like that, you know?

Because I think there is the bigger world that I can explore, not that I can just admire, but that I can be participating in it.

Thanks for your question.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- [Blonde Curly Haired man] Did you say you've had the same assistance for 15 years?

- [Sopheap] Yes.

- At some point, do they want to stop being like your minions, and like create their own ideas, and give you their ideas?

- Oh, yeah.

(audience laughing) - So what do you do when that happens?

- We just take a day off and go drink, or something you know?

(audience laughing) - You try to trick them out of it?

- I love it, your question is collaboration, right?

- Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah.

- It's about collaboration.

And I love collaboration.

I mean, look, I mean, I'm an artist because I collaborate, first of all, I collaborate with my teachers when they taught me stuff.

I collaborate with artists that inspire me when I look at their stuff, I steal from them, you know?

- Mm.

- I collaborate with nature.

I just claim it, you know, Rosewood seeds, I mean, who does that, you know?

- Yeah.

- I do it, you know?

And my guys, yeah.

I mean, look, it's a boring job if you just working without thinking.

Mind you, some of them just wanna do that.

But I always encourage them every, like, we have meetings every now and then, and I said, "Don't just make something without thinking.

You gotta think, you gotta do, you know, make some mistake because that's what the joy is.

And then we can talk about the mistake, and then maybe it's not a mistake, you know?

- So are some of the pictures you showed us, some of their ideas are being inputted in there?

- Oh yeah.

- All their input is there.

- Oh, they're there, yeah, yeah, yep.

Come on, when you worked with each other for 15 years.

- Yeah, yeah (laughs).

- Yeah, you must be pretty good, you know?

- Cool, okay, thank you.

- [Sopheap] (laughs) Welcome.

- My question was, do you have any art pieces based off of the Khmer Rouge?

- Based off Khmer Rouge?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, not directly, or you can say all of them are in some way or another, yeah.

I mean, bones (laughs), skin, you know, emptiness, darkness, you see them, right?

Labor, you know, toiling away on something that is quite meaningless.

I mean, I think it's there, yeah.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- Good question.

Oh.

- [Audience Member] Hi.

- [Sopheap] Hi.

- So in looking at all of your work today, one thing that I really came to appreciate was how like bodily and natural everything looked, like particularly in your sculptures and like the way that they take up space, and the way that you can see the anatomy behind them.

Or when we were looking at your paintings, you mentioned that you drew a lot of inspiration from music.

And so I'm curious as to how nature and music kind of like interact with each other and inform your practice?

- That's a good question, I'm not sure how to answer it.

(laughs) I mean, there's a certain way, like the water flow a certain way, or a tree branch grow a certain way.

When I was a student, actually my favorite class was botany before I declare as an art major, 'cause I just couldn't follow it up, you know?

And then I decided to walk into a painting class.

I try to be a scientist, but the closest I come to cutting up something was a worm, you know?

But you do learn something, you see the way things grow.

So I think botany, and just being interested in plants in general teach me a lot about how things should grow and how things should turn.

And also I draw a lot, I mean, I learn how to draw, that's probably my saving grace was that I had the patience to actually learn how to draw because my teacher would just beat me to death, you know, like if I don't.

You know, but I finally like realize the reason why people like Giacometti, or Van Gogh, like their work is timeless and it connects so many culture and connects everybody, it's the drawing, you know?

That's where the pain is, that's where the hurt is, and also that's where the joy is as well.

And it just hits all the right note with the drawing, so I try to discipline myself to really do the homework, you know?

So I think my forms is informed by the way nature normally is, I guess.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- [Audience Member] All right, thank you.

- [Sopheap] Sure.

Yes ma'am.

- Hi.

- [Sopheap] Hi.

- So I was wondering what is like the main factor, or one of the main factors in nature that you find you want to base your art off of?

Like in your pieces that are based off of nature, what tends to be the main thing that you like look at in the nature that you want to incorporate into your art?

- I think the forms in nature, sometimes they're very simple form, but if you really, really look at them, and you make them in another material or in another scale, it gives you a sense of...

I don't know, it's nourishment, you know?

It's nice to work off of nature instead of politic, if that answer anything.

I like things that don't say anything.

I like things that just are, they're just things.

And then you're attracted to them or they a attract to you or something, and then you meet somewhere.

And it's a way to, I don't know.

It's it's a way to celebrate them, but in a significant way, not just putting something on a table and call it art, but actually really to translate it into something that take labor, and energy.

And yeah, does that make sense?

- [Audience Member] Yeah cool, thank you.

- Okay.

- Hi, thank you for that beautiful lecture.

I just have a couple questions related to influence, and how you translate that into sculpture.

But you talked about your father's relationship with Buddhism and I was just curious, what influence, if any, you see it on your work?

And then my other question was just related to, you spoke of looking at the lines in nature, and translating that into sculpture.

And I was very curious, now that you're listening to more music with the process of trying to, you know, translate notes or sounds, maybe translate is not the right word, but to bring that to sculpture, if that feels different than finding the lines in nature?

Thank you.

- I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I got you.

Can you make it a little simpler?

- Yes, first question about Buddhist influence, and second question about- - Buddhist, yeah, what about, sorry, what about the Buddhist?

- Oh, just if it has influence on your art.

- Oh, okay.

- Yes, 'cause you spoke of your father's relationship.

- Okay, let me answer that one first.

- Yes, thank you.

- Well, I come from a country that is built on Buddhism.

Everything about Cambodia is Buddhism, I mean, there are temples everywhere and some of the grandest temple on the planet.

So it's just ingrained in the culture.

And I mean, I don't go to temples, but I read a couple of books, very simple books on Buddhism, and I do meditation.

I think, you know, from my own perspective, Buddhism is about nature, Buddhism is about acceptance of that we are a part of nature, and what we do revolves around nature.

So I guess I'm a Buddhist in that sense.

I don't have a problem with it, but it doesn't really translate to how I think in term of what is Buddhism, and then how it does to my work.

I just am, you know, I'm just a way, you know?

So I'm just a tool, I guess.

- Thank you.

- And the other question.

- The question was about, you know, seeing the images, we can see so clearly how the lines from nature show up in the sculpture.

And I just wondered if the process of hearing the sound feels different to you, or what that process is like of, you know, having that influence your sculpture as well, since it's a oral dimension rather than perhaps a more visual one.

- I mean, you know, not all the time, but I do listen to music sometimes.

Sometime I listen to heavy metal music, you know, and I'm making this very meditative work as well, you know, so I don't know really know how to answer it.

I don't know, I make it, you know, I don't know.

- Thank you.

- (laughs) Yes.

- Hey, sorry, I hate speaking in front of audiences, but this felt important.

I'm in an environmental anthropology class here at the University of Michigan, and just today we were talking about the relationship just with sand mining between Cambodia and Singapore, just Singapore's sort of taking of this natural resource.

- [Sopheap] Well, they're buying it, sir.

- What was that?

- [Sopheap] They're buying it?

- Yes.

- [Sopheap] Trading it for money, I guess.

- Sure, yeah, and I was just wondering how you sort of, if you took in like political ideas like that you said, like just about the idea of taking nature, and sort of using it in your art.

I was wondering if you had related that to that issue, or if that's maybe not?

- [Sopheap] No, probably not.

- No, okay.

- I mean, I think for me it's more of collaboration and borrowing.

I plant a lot of trees.

Yeah, I mean, look, there's all sorts of things to do with the, you know, the sand dredging, and how it destroyed the coastline and the rivers.

You know, I usually live right on the Mekong, it's like a three meters away from falling into the Mekong.

And then there are these things, there's these barges that goes up and down, you know, very loud.

It doesn't make me feel very good to think about it, you know, it's not something I can do anything about, I'm really powerless, you know?

I don't let it come into my studio much.

It's our time and history, and there are much more people that can make a difference, and they're more powerful than I am, so I just turn it off and I focus on something that I can do, you know, yeah.

- Is art sort of more of a healing practice then, for you than maybe a political one?

- Yeah more.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

It's more of an educational practice, right?

I mean, it is more like learning where your knowledge can take you, and how you can live as an artist in the world, you know?

I mean, there's a lot of bad things, you know, in the world.

And I like to create my own learning (laughs), sorry, I like to create my own little universe among the living and the dead, you know?

So I can't be concerned about everybody.

- Yeah.

- [Sopheap] Yeah.

- Well, thank you.

- You're welcome.

Yes, sir.

- My question was, have you ever been disappointed in one of your art pieces?

- I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

- Have you ever been disappointed in one of your art pieces?

- Never.

(audience laughing) No, of course, of course.

There's something that's so frustrating, I mean, they're just sitting there for years, yeah.

But you move on, I don't look at them too much.

I don't overthink it.

I tend to gravitate towards the one that are good, you know, not let the one that are not so good bother me too much, but they're there, sure.

Not disappointed, but just not knowing what to do with them.

Yeah, last one.

- So I've been teaching about Cambodia to my middle school students for about two and a half months.

- Teaching what?

- About Cambodia?

- About Cambodia?

- Yeah.

- Oh, okay.

- We do a deep dive every three years.

And every time I come back to it, it's three years later, and I've been doing it since 2005.

And it feels like the country's changing very rapidly.

Are you optimistic about the direction your country's going?

- I'm half and half, I guess I have to be a little bit more optimistic than pessimistic, right?

Look, it's like this country, right?

You gotta be a little optimistic, right?

I mean, or else you'll get caught up with all sort of nonsense, you know?

I mean, we are a developing country, and we've been trying to sort of revive ourselves from cutting each other's throat, you know?

I mean, you know, it's a tragic place, let's not forget, right?

So obviously now we are better off than how we ever have been, right?

- Do you feel the country's healed?

- Of course, it's not healed.

I mean, it's healing.

- Healing.

- Yeah, but how does a country heal when you have every single family affected by, you know, death?

And it's not just the people there, it's the people here, the Cambodian here are also suffering.

There's trauma, you know, and imagine when you're here and you're still suffering, then what happened when you're not here, you're there?

And still living in that sort of chaos, everybody's trying to get to the top in which way they can and feed their family, and have education, infrastructure of the country.

You have, you know, outside influences.

You know, we don't make anything, you know, so we rely on other people's kindness.

I mean, let's be frank, we don't have any building, we don't build anything, we don't sell clothes.

And you know, we are very limited country, so I'm very sympathetic to it.

This is probably why I choose to stay there, because I think all of that emotion plays into who I am and how I make my work, you know?

- Do you feel like you're- - My work don't look tragic, but I think there's a lot of tragedy that goes into making the work, you know?

- Are you part of a, maybe a movement to shift into making things, whether it's art or other things that are more creative?

- Well, the young people live in Cambodia now, there's a lot of young artists.

And they're hopeful and they're traveling, and some of them are very good, they're very good, you know?

But there's a certain acceptance of art that when I first arrived in Cambodia in 2002, that I didn't see, right?

In 2002 when I was showing my work in, you know, coffee shops and things like that, you know, to make a living.

Most of the audience were expat people, but now when you go to an exhibition, it is all full of young Cambodian people, you know?

So in that aspect, I think it's, yeah, there is a lot of hope there, you know?

I think we understand art now, the importance of it better than our parents did, let's say, right?

And making an example, silly an example of that, you know, earlier.

I think for the most part it's still like that, you know, and I don't blame them.

I mean, it's better to be a doctor than a artist.

(audience laughing) I do wholeheartedly, you know, accept that, but we can travel, we have this thing called (indistinct), you know, we go to Thailand and Vietnam and with our visa, you know, which is progress, you know?

So yeah, there's a lot of hope, yeah.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

Yes, ma'am.

- Thank you so much for that, that was amazing.

I'm curious if you have a favorite work of yours, or the most enjoyable one to create- - My favorite work (laughs).

- I know you have, they're all so amazing, do you have- - Believe it or not I do have my favorite work.

- Really?

- It's the first one, yeah.

- The first one, I love that one, amazing.

So you know, I mentioned that Guy Issanjou the French Cultural Center Director pointed that out to me, that that's art, right?

(laughs) I was like, "Oh, okay."

And I gave it to him, you know, when he left Cambodia.

So I want it back, but I don't know, (audience laughing) - Should remake it.

- I don't know if he'll give it back to me.

- You should remake it, you got- - Huh?

- You should remake it, make another version of it.

- It's not the same, I did make out a version, but it's not the same.

- I know, I get it, yeah.

Thank you so much - It's not the same...

So you know what?

He said to me, "Are you sure you wanna give this to me?"

I did that twice, and I regret.

When I left Chicago, a good friend of mine, she loved one of my drawings, and that time I did just very small drawings of like kids playing, you know, black and white ink, just like bamboo pen on rough watercolor paper.

She said, "This is the most beautiful work of yours."

I said, "Oh, thank you, you can have it."

And now I was hanging in her room somewhere in Hong Kong.

And I also regret it, you know, not having that one too.

- I get that, thank you so much.

- Anyway, you let it go.

- It was brought up several times that you're like the first contemporary Cambodian artist.

Why do you think that is?

Or like, why do you think that like you are that one?

- Well, I don't think that (laughs).

Why do you think, I think that?

- Oh, well, like several people said it about you, and like that French Director or something.

- There's people who's written on it, and they break it down in some way.

But look, it's such a young history and yeah, look, I have to accept the fact that I am maybe the most well known perhaps internationally, I accept that too, I mean, that's just reality.

But to say that I'm the first contemporary artist, I mean, come on, who makes that kind of claim?

I wouldn't make it.

But if somebody else does it, it's for some other reason.

I don't know know.

- Okay.

Do you believe it?

- I don't know.

- What?

- Do you believe that?

- I don't know, I don't have enough information.

- Right, yeah.

No, I mean, there are other artists.

So you know, if I go around talking like that, I don't think they'd be happy about it.

(audience laughing) But you know, when people write, I mean, it's just sensationalism, right?

It makes a mark, it makes something, something explode when you say that, or people are gonna go, "Wow, what," you know?

So I don't think about it.

- Thank you.

- Welcome.

- Hi, I'm an alumni of the university, and I'm by no means an artist at all.

But I think what I love so much about your work is just the playfulness and curiosity in it.

I love that you showed us so many of your works, and some of it was just, how many different materials can I use to make rosewood nuts?

Or can I make this really big?

And what would that be like if I made it really big?

- Right.

- How do you maintain that curiosity?

You've been doing this for so long, how do you stay so curious?

- (laughs) I don't know, just being ignorant to reality, I guess.

(audience laughing) You know, it's like, I don't wanna get old, you know?

(laughs) I mean, I think it's important for artists to stay curious and young, I think it's important for anybody.

I don't have kids, so maybe that's part of it.

I mean, when I see people with kids, they get old real quick, you know?

(audience laughing) No, I'm married, but we don't have kids.

We have dogs, which make us younger.

(audience laughing) So, yeah, I think as an artist, you have to stay curious and that's just the way it is.

I don't know if you have to, but you just are, you know, because there's no thing... You know what's exciting for me now, is contemporary music.

And now this is like, sometime like last year or two years ago, I felt like there weren't anything interesting to listen to.

And then all of a sudden, thank God for YouTube, (audience laughing) I mean, there's just new stuff, and you go, "Wow, who are these guys," you know?

You know, right now the music that I'm interested in, is the music that have the appearance of no ego, you know, where people just get up and play.

And when they do a video, they don't need different camera angles and cut and paste, you know, it's just people playing instruments, and sing, and sometimes they wear a mask, or they wear a wig, or they don't look at the audience.

I love that, you know, there's something humble about that.

So that's one of my curiosities.

- Thank you.

- Welcome.

Sir, you wait until the end.

(speaking in foreign language) oh, it's gonna be difficult.

- Well, I just wanna say thank you very much for coming.

I just found out about you, and I just saw your pictures of it when I was in Chicago?

- Oh.

- That was a long time ago, I said, "Oh, I, I'm gonna send it to you."

- [Sopheap] Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- Oh, wow, please.

- Thank you very much for coming.

- Oh, please, no, no, no.

(speaking in foreign language) - Yeah, sure.

Thank you (laughs).

(audience applauding) Thank you very much.

(audience applauding) (indistinct audience chatter) (indistinct audience chatter)