Creator
Ly Daravuth
Cambodian artist, curator and art historian who co-founded the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh.
Ly Daravuth is a Cambodian artist, curator and art historian, and a co-founder, with Ingrid Muan, of the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh.[1] The National Gallery Singapore calls his work as an artist and curator in the 1990s and early 2000s "instrumental in the development of contemporary art in Cambodia".[2]
Early life
He was born in Kampong Thom Province. He was in Thai refugee camps from 1980, moved to France in 1983 and studied art history and visual arts at the Sorbonne in Paris.[3] He returned to Cambodia in 1993; the National Gallery Singapore places him among the first diaspora Cambodians to return in the 1990s.[3][2]
Teaching and Reyum
He taught at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, and in 2000 was a lecturer in art history at its Faculty of Archaeology.[3][2]
The Prince Claus Fund dates Reyum's founding to 1998, and the Angkor Database dates its publishing house, Reyum Publishing, to December 1998. The National Gallery Singapore gives 1999.[1][4][2] In the gallery's account, Reyum came to combine an exhibition space, a free art school, a publishing house in three languages and a research institute, and its exhibitions and classes helped spread the idea that "anything could be art".[2] The Angkor Database records reference and art books under the Reyum name until 2009.[4]
He was dramaturg for Cambodian Stories, a collaboration of Eiko & Koma with the Reyum Painting Collective, young painters who studied and worked at the institute.[5]
Work
The National Gallery Singapore says he made few artworks but that their influence on contemporary art in Cambodia was large, and that he worked with found images and materials, then a new idea in Cambodia.[2]
The Messengers (2000) is an installation of photographs collected by the Documentation Center of Cambodia and said to show teenagers and children who carried messages for the Khmer Rouge. In the exhibition text Ly says that the blurred, numbered portraits are easily misread, and that his work asks what a document is and what "the truth" is.[3] A later version, The Messengers II (2000/2021), digital photographic prints, is in the collection of the National Gallery Singapore.[2]
References 5
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Prince Claus Fund, Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 National Gallery Singapore, The Messengers II, Ly Daravuth, 2000/2021, accession 2022-00098
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Asianart.com, The Legacy of Absence, Ly Daravuth, The Messengers (2000)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Angkor Database, Daravuth Ly (undated)
- ↑ Video Data Bank, Cambodian Stories (undated)
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