Creator

Sopheap Pich

Sopheap Pich is a Cambodian sculptor who works mainly in rattan and bamboo.

A smiling man in a dark jacket standing in front of tall woven rattan and bamboo sculptures
Sopheap Pich in front of one of his sculptures at MASS MoCA, 2012

Sopheap Pich is a Cambodian sculptor known for open, woven forms made from thin strips of rattan and bamboo.[1][2] Asia Society describes him as "widely considered to be Cambodia's most internationally prominent contemporary artist."[2] His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong.[2][3]

Early life and training

Pich was born in Battambang in 1971 and grew up in a farming family.[2][1] He was a small child during the Khmer Rouge regime.[4][3] After the Vietnamese invasion ended that regime in 1979, his family fled to Thailand and spent four years in refugee camps, and in 1984 they moved to the United States.[3][2] He studied painting, with a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995 and a master's from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.[2][3]

Work

Pich moved back to Cambodia in 2002, some two decades after he had left, and turned from painting to sculpture.[1][2] Working with local craftsmen, he developed a latticework method that recalls woven bamboo baskets and fish traps; M+ quotes him remembering the fish traps he made with his father as a boy.[1] His first sculpture, Silence (2004), is a pair of joined lung shapes woven from rattan and wire. He gave up painting altogether in 2005, the year of his first solo show of rattan and bamboo sculptures, at the French Cultural Center in Phnom Penh.[3]

He buys his materials from local growers and suppliers. In wall reliefs from 2012 he returned to the flat format of painting, using rice-sack burlap colored with Cambodian soils and sealed with beeswax. Since the COVID-19 pandemic he has worked with aluminum from old pots and pans bought at recycling depots.[3] Morning Glory (2011), a sculpture of rattan, metal and plywood more than five meters long, is in the Guggenheim's collection.[5][4] Pich has said that his art is real rather than abstract, and that the material is what gives him a voice.[1]

He co-founded Sala Artspace in Phnom Penh, where he taught a course for young Cambodian artists, and since 2021 he has sat on the fellowship advisory committee of Cambodian Living Arts.[3]

Exhibitions

  • 2012: Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany.[3][4]
  • 2013: Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich, ten works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, part of the Season of Cambodia festival.[6][2] For the same festival he made life-size puppets for A Bend in the River, performed by the Khmer Arts Ensemble with music by Him Sophy.[7]
  • 2017: the 57th Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva.[3][4]

References 7
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 M+ Magazine, Sopheap Pich: Material as Identification (September 27, 2018)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Asia Society Texas, Artist Talk: Sopheap Pich (undated)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Tina Keng Gallery, Sopheap Pich biography (undated)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Wikipedia, Sopheap Pich (2026)
  5. ↑ Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Sopheap Pich (undated)
  6. ↑ BroadwayWorld, Season of Cambodia to Culminate with Visual Arts Open Studio Exhibition, 5/25-27 (May 22, 2013)
  7. ↑ American Theatre, News in Brief for April 2013 (April 1, 2013)
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This page was last edited on 27 October 2026, at 14:54.