Kong Dara
October – November, 2015
KONG Dara (b. 1990, Prey Veng Province, Cambodia) works with a variety of media including drawing as well as photography, video, and installation. He studied visual art at Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh’s White Building. He has participated in various group exhibitions in Cambodia and internationally. He had his first solo exhibition ‘Open Mind’ at Strange Fruit Cambodia, Phnom Penh in August this year. Dara also works as Residency Assistant for the “Pisaot” Experimental Residency Program at Sa Sa Art Projects, supporting artists-in-residence from Cambodia and internationally in realizing their projects.
During his residency period, Dara continued his research on the lives of LGBT people, which has been a recurring theme in his recent works, while at the same time observing and adjusting to his new surroundings, which was spent mostly in Bangkok but also at KMUTT Space, in Ratchaburi.
After travelling on the public van service between Rathchaburi and Bangkok, as well as frequent trips on the BTS, he became interested in other passengers, travelling on the same journey, observing what they do, imagine what could they be thinking about during these in transit moments. Do they know that he’s looking? Would they care? Why are people not talking to eachother? These are the questions that arose in his mind and inspired him to work on the subject of ‘communication’.
On the most basic level his work deals with the lack of openess between people in contemporary soceity. But we can also see that Dara is alluding to the condition of many LGBT people, who due to various reasons are not or cannot be open about their sexualities, and often have to rely on subtle, non-verbal forms of communication.
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