Creator
Yim Maline
Sculptor and draftswoman from Battambang, based in Siem Reap, whose work deals with memory and the loss of Cambodia's natural environment.
Yim Maline is a Cambodian artist who makes sculpture and drawings about memory and the natural world.[1][2] Born in Battambang in 1982, she trained at Phare Ponleu Selpak and in France, and lives and works in Siem Reap.[1][3] With her partner, the artist Svay Sareth, she runs the Blue Art Center in Siem Reap.[2]
Early life and training
Her parents were too poor to give her more than the essentials, and as a child she made her own playthings.[3][4] A block of wood served as her doll, and she shaped pots and pans from clay.[4] She also kept a small vegetable garden while the sounds of the civil war's front carried from far off.[2]
In 1995 she was among the first students at the art school of Phare Ponleu Selpak near Battambang, where she studied until 2003.[3][1] It was there that she met Svay Sareth, one of the school's founders.[2] Her training took her to France in 2003. In 2010 she earned a fine arts degree, the Diplôme National d'Arts Plastiques, at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Caen, then settled in Siem Reap.[3][1]
Work
Richard Koh Fine Art places her work in the social consciousness of Cambodia after the war, and describes her drawings and sculptures as rebuilding memory, social and personal, in honor of a natural world lost to war and economic policy.[1] Hyperallergic describes her pieces of handmade paper and reused waste as a record of the damage done to the land, first by war and later by a rush of foreign investment. Her materials include burnt cardboard, pottery shards set in soil, and puckered paper.[2]
Her first solo show, Remember, opened at SA SA BASSAC in Phnom Penh in 2011. She said she made it to work through memories of a childhood of poverty and conflict.[4][1] It included a mound of earth with clay knives, rough bowls and bone-like dolls; a 4-meter ceramic kite, Hope, hanging still; eight plaster masks, New Face; and large graphite drawings.[4] The gallery's director, Erin Gleeson, saw both play and criticism in each work.[4]
In 2015 SA SA BASSAC showed her series Having a hole or empty space inside: sculptures of charcoal over aluminum frames, holding pots of green plants, with crayon drawings.[3] She told The Cambodia Daily that the dead wood of the charcoal stood for a country that looked healthy on the outside but was failing inside, and named the loss of forests to logging and development among her concerns.[3]
Exhibitions and residencies
- 2011: Remember, solo, SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh; Eight Women, group, French Cultural Center, Phnom Penh.[1][4]
- 2012: Silk Threads, solo, The Insider Gallery, Phnom Penh; No Name, solo, Cambodia Youth Arts Festival at SA SA BASSAC; New Journey, group, Cambodian Living Arts Gallery, Phnom Penh.[1]
- 2013: artist in residence at Bose Pacia in New York, in the In Residence program of the Season of Cambodia festival.[1]
- 2015: Having a hole or empty space inside, SA SA BASSAC.[3]
Blue Art Center
Yim and Svay built their house and garden in Siem Reap after their years in France, and the Blue Art Center grew around them.[2] Hyperallergic describes a weekend art school for children and teenagers, studios, a residency for visiting artists, and a design and fabrication workshop whose commissions pay for the center. In 2025 the couple planned to add a museum of contemporary art and a shop.[2]
References 4
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Richard Koh Fine Art, Yim Maline (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Hyperallergic, M. T. Anderson, One Couple's Bold Vision for the Future of Cambodian Art (January 29, 2025)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 The Cambodia Daily, Michelle Vachon, Artist Explores 'Rotten' Core of Cambodia Through Sculpture (May 2, 2015)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 The Cambodia Daily, Alice Foster, New Show Exhibits an Artist's Dark Memories of Childhood (April 11, 2011)
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