KHVAY SAMNANG

Originally commissioned for documenta 14, Khvay Samnang created a two-channel video work and series of photographs Preah Kunlong (The way of the spirit) (2016-2017) that takes on land politics, resource extraction and Indigenous Cambodian resistance as its primary concern. Created in collaboration with the classically-trained dancer and choreographer Nget Rady — who is also the performer in the video — Preah Kunlong powerfully utilizes a lexicon of gestures and movement to point toward the need for embodied forms of knowledge and understanding amidst the mechanistic frameworks of rapacious development, which are threatening not just forests and Indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, but also worldwide. More specifically, Preah Kunlong offers a proposal for the language of the body to exercise what political ecologist Nancy Lee Peluso has called “counter-mapping”, a form of “critical cartography” that has been practiced by Indigenous Forest communities in Southeast Asia to strengthen claims on their traditional territories and resources by defying hegemonic mapmaking methods, which have long abetted strategies of colonial rule and resource extraction. To the Chong people of the Areng Valley in Southwestern Cambodia, knowledge is transmitted through speech and body, and land is mapped through embodied methods rooted in ancestral and oral histories.

Khvay Samnang’s multidisciplinary practice offers new views on historic and current events as well as on traditional cultural rituals using humorous symbolic gestures. In his work, which includes all media, he focuses on the humanitarian and ecological impacts of colonialism and globalization. The development of each body of work is based on thorough research and investigation of local specificities, structures and conditions. Traveling is a crucial tool for his practice. Engaging directly and personally with local communities – within and beyond the cultural scene – is an integral part of his work, which makes it highly relevant, critical and connectable to various contemporary discourses. His work shows a remarkable ability to engage with cultural and geographic contexts as well as with spatial and institutional settings. Khvay Samnang was born in 1982 in Svay Rieng, Cambodia. He graduated from the Painting Department at the Royal University of Fine Art in Phnom Penh, where he lives and works today