27 Mar 2019, 6:00-8:00pm
Venue: #8B, St 308 (near Bassac Lane former Lemon Tree restaurant) 
​Map: https://goo.gl/Z7ewQ3
Exhibition runs through 7 Apr, 10am-6pm

“New Fields”
by Eng Rithchandaneth, Nipan Oranniwesna & Tan Vatey

New Fields temporarily transforms a Khmer house in a burgeoning neighbourhood of Phnom Penh’s Tonle Bassac district with an exhibition of new works by artists Eng Rithchandaneth, Nipan Oranniwesna and Tan Vatey. Tonle Bassac was demarcated as part of the Khmer quarter by the French colonial administration,
and was later largely developed into a district of modernist villas (like those in Boeung Keng Kang district) during the post-independence period. Known for its spacious, gardened, and low-rise buildings, the district becomes a very feasible inner urban neighborhood for lucrative “development” in the current regime. Over the last few decades, the area has witnessed a dramatic transformation with new high-rise apartments and buildings mushrooming, however with the price of urban history erased and poor communities removed.

Vatey intervenes the house’s front yard by installing a garden filled with tree trunks paired with baby plants sprouting from the soil through the clay tiles. The trunks are parts of a milk fruit tree from her grandmother’s house where she used to play around during her childhood but it was recently cut down for house renovation. 

The artist looks for people to adopt the baby plants after the
exhibition. Daneth turns the ground floor of the house into an immersive installation made of grass seeds. The green grass seems to struggle to grow amidst the grotesque landscape which appears to be invading through the floor and up the walls. The artist is concerned with the growing, parasitic nature of “development”
in Cambodia through land concession projects by private local and foreign investors. Upstairs is a poetic installation of text made of carved wood by Nipan.The scattered text placed on the wooden floor is extracted from Hungarian film The Turin Horse by Béla Tarr in which the artist found resonance with the dilemma and entrapment of Burmese migrant workers living in Bangkok: “The storm continues to rage outside... as it rages unbridled over the barren land.”

​New Fields presents works that challenge the audience for confrontation and reflection on our relationship with the environment we inhabit or stay on as guests. It also seeks for actions of care as the audience can adopt plants from the
exhibition.

About the artists

Eng Rithchandaneth

Eng Rithchandaneth (b. 1993, Phnom Penh) took art classes at Sa Sa Art Projects,
and holds a Bachelor in Design from SETEC Institute. She works with video,
photography, sculpture and installation. Her work largely deals with issues of
development in Cambodian context and its power structure, environment, and
nationhood. Her most recent group exhibitions include Forced Marriage under the Khmer Rouge, Bophana Center (2018); Kraanh Norneal, Sensing the Capital Project,Sa Sa Art Projects (2017); Poetic Topographies, SA SA BASSAC (2016); and
Futurographies: Cambodia-USA-France, New York, Phnom Penh and Paris
(2015-2016). Daneth was an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center, USA
(2015) and S-AIR, Sapporo, Japan (2016).

Nipan Oranniwesna

Nipan Oranniwesna (b. 1962, Bangkok) works with diverse media ranging from
painting, sculpture, mixed media, site-specific installation, photography and
video. His practice delves into personal and collective memories, poetically dealing with spaces, urban cartography and the geo-body of nation state. Nipan has exhibited widely in Thailand and internationally. His latest group exhibitions include: the 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018); DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museums, Chiang Mai (2018);Imaginarium: To the End of the Earth, SAM @ 8Q, Singapore (2017); and KEMPOKU
ART 2016, Ibaraki, Japan. Nipan represented Thailand at the Thai Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007).

Tan Vatey 

Tan Vatey (b. 1992, Phnom Penh) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer who
also enjoys facilitating art to children and adults and collaborating with other
artists and non-profits. Together with Indonesian-Belgian arts-instigator Sinta
Wibowo, Vatey ventures into live
experimentations throughout the animated
exhibitions of [re-enacting memories] (2017-...), for Europalia Art Festival, Brussels
and Rainbow Community Kampuchea, Phnom Penh as well as the walkshops of
[watch & wa/onder] (2018-...) in Semarang, Indonesia, and Shaxi, China. Vatey has
exhibited widely in Cambodia including recently at Facing the Climate, touring
exhibition by Swedish Embassy (2018); Snapshot (2018), Sangker Gallery,
Battambang; and Kraanh Norneal, Sensing the Capital Project (2017), Sa Sa Art Projects. She was an artist-in-residence at e x t a n t a t i o n, Chiang Mai and Vermont Studio Center, USA (2018) and Newfoundland, Belgium (2017).