Anywhere But Here

Opening: Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 6-9pm

Felix González-Torres, Hàm Nghi, Thao‑Nguyen Phan, Pratchaya Phinthong, Vandy Rattana, SAAP (Singapore Art Archive Project), Khvay Samnang, Albert Samreth, Sa Sa Art Projects, Shui Tit Sing, Shooshie Sulaiman, Tran Minh Duc, Vuth Lyno

Curators : Mélanie Mermod & Vera Mey

Anywhere But Here (N’importe où sauf ici, គ្រប់ទីកន្លែង លើកលែងទីនេះ) brings together art­works that seek out some cir­cu­la­tions of objects, fig­ures or ges­tures in rela­tion to Cambodia, and more broadly within the geopo­lit­ical con­text of Southeast Asia. With a focus on deter­ri­to­ri­al­iza­tion – whether they would be forced or driven by free will, con­se­quences of uncon­trol­lable slip­pages or trans­fers care­fully orches­trated – these col­lected sto­ries of move­ments draw van­ishing points within pre­vailing pro­cesses of his­tory-making and pat­ri­mo­nial her­itage.

Numerous shifts of power in Cambodia have repeat­edly recast the con­cep­tion of cul­ture and his­to­ri­al­iza­tion of facts and pat­ri­mony, including the seem­ingly time­less and ongoing ten­sions with its neigh­bors Vietnam and Thailand, the colo­nial French Protectorate (1863-1953), the 1970 coup leading to the assump­tion of power of Lon Nol, the fol­lowing four years of civil war (1970-1974), mean­while the rise South-East Asian Communist par­ties and the geno­cidal rule of the Khmer Rouge Regime (1975-1979), to the Vietnamese ruled People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1991), the rule of United Nations Transitional Authority over the country (1992-1993), which led to the auto­cratic rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen (since 1998).

The works pre­sented in Anywhere But Here address marginal move­ments devel­op­ping within his­tor­ical moments, such as the forced exile or vol­un­tary dis­place­ments of intel­lec­tuals to France and its colonies (Hàm Nghi, Tran Minh Duc). The works of Thao-Nguyen Phan evoke the after-effects of French and Japanese intru­sions on the evo­lu­tion of agrarian land­scape and def­er­ence ges­tures, while others invent new sce­narios in pat­ri­mo­nial spaces (Shooshie Sulaiman, Pratchaya Phinthong). Some works trace the inti­mate tra­jec­to­ries of objects and anony­mous per­sons (Felix González-Torres, Khvay Samnang, Vuth Lyno), while others take as their starting point former artists’ jour­neys that lie ambigu­ously between a quest for dis­ori­en­ta­tion or a quest of tan­gible ori­gins (Albert Samreth, Singapore Art Archive Project, Vandy Rattana).

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Download the exhi­bi­tion brochure (BS n°20)

Exhibition view of "Anywhere But Here", Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2016. Image: Aurélien Mole.