INSTALLATION VIEWS
i love the way you see the world, but why can’t you see me?, Experimental Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, April 29 – May 9, 2024.
គ្រប់យ៉ាងក្នុងខ្សែភ្នែកអ្នកមិនមានខ្ញុំ
Experiemntal Gallery
Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
April 29 — May 9, 2024
(Video) (Checklist)
(Essay)
i love the way you see the world, but why can’t you see me? traces my family’s history through Khao-I-Dang, a refugee camp where they lived after fleeing Cambodia. It brings together my eldest brother’s photographs from the 1980s, taken while he worked there, with images I made when I returned to the site in 2022. By layering these two moments, the work moves between past and present, holding memory as something unstable and incomplete. Materials like concrete, wood, and paper pulp echo the built environment of the camp, while image transfers, fabrics, and paint partially reveal and obscure figures and landscapes, reflecting how memory appears and disappears over time.
Across the work, I engage processes of translation and (dis)translation (1) through ornament, architecture, and Buddhist visual culture, not to recreate them faithfully but to move through them with distance and friction. The act of making is physical and repetitive, drawing from the labor of my parents and their migration histories. Sculptural forms resemble gates, altars, and temporary structures that seem to open and close, resisting permanence or clear function. A sound and video component draws from Cambodian popular music about Khao-I-Dang, weaving together longing, loss, and sentiment. Together, the work sits with what cannot be fully recovered, holding space for ambiguity, contradiction, and the ongoing search for belonging.
Text by Sopheak Sam