Reconciliation with Whom?: Image-making by Cambodian Artists in the Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge

• In Event: Curating Resilient Memory and Reconfiguring War Heritage in Northeast and Southeast Asia

Abstract

In Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, discourses of reconciliation and preservation have generated challenging, ambivalent new practices of image-making. That is, both the cultural tourism industry and the ongoing official process of reconciliation have employed the language of conservation and preservation, which has in turn shaped artistic practices of image-making outside of official and commercial channels. By examining these developments through a series of artistic productions, the main research inquiry concerns how image production is intertwined with memory politics. Focusing on a recent work of video art entitled "MONOLOGUE" by Cambodian photographer and artist Vandy Rattana, this paper explores questions including: What does image-making mean in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge? How does one perceive an image in the aftermath of genocide and atrocity? How do the artists under discussion approach and reinterpret the kind of remembrance and reconciliation embodied in official discourse and image-making?

Author

• Fang-Tze Hsu, National University of Singapore