Vandy Rattana

Photojournalism

One of a generation born into the fragile period after the fall of Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) executed most artists and intellectuals, Phnom Penh-born Vandy Rattana cut short his studies in law at the Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia in 2005 to teach himself photography.[2] While attending some short courses he was encouraged by American Erin Gleeson (curator and specialist in contemporary art from Cambodia and until recently director of Sa Sa Bassac).

Following the footsteps of Vietnam War era Cambodian photojournalists Sou Vichith, Dith Pran and Tae Kim Heang, Rattana was inspired by the capacity of photojournalism to bear witness and its potential to document Cambodia's troubled and damaged culture, and to provoke activism.

Artist

In 2007 he and five other artists Heng Ravuth, Khvay Samnang, Kong Vollak, Lim Sokchanlina, and Vuth Lyno founded [3] the collective Stiev Selapak (Art Rebels)[4] which in 2009 opened the alternative space Sa Sa Art Gallery in Phnom Penh. In 2010 they launched Sa Sa Art Projects in 2010 in order to host artist residencies, workshops, and community-based collaborations. In 2011, Sa Sa Art Gallery merged with BASSAC Art Projects to become SA SA BASSAC.

Before he left Stiev Selapak in 2012, Rattana was influenced by this contact with other artists and by Erin Gleeson to the effect that Rattana's work moved gradually away from straight documentary to incorporate the procedures of conceptual art. Preoccupied with the everyday as experienced by the average Cambodian, his early, so-called Self-portrait series (2005–06) does not show himself, but searches for the ideal of home amongst images of family members in domestic interiors, while Looking In (2005-2006) examines his own workplace to offer candid insights into Cambodian office life. Fire of the year (2008) deals with contemporary environmental issues in the ecological wasteland on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Walking Through (2008–09) shows labour conditions in the environment of a traditional rubber plantation in Kampong Cham province. His short video Monologue offers up homage to the sister he never met, interred in a mass burial site alongside his grandmother and five thousand others who were discarded during the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978.

Recognition

Rattana achieved international acclaim for Bomb Ponds (2009), acquired for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative in 2012. In this he documented the devastation wrought by the U.S. Vietnam-era carpet bombing operations on Cambodia’s landscape, and uncovered the history by engaging the collective memory of people of the ten most severely bombed provinces.

Rattana has had solo exhibitions in Phnom Penh at Popil PhotoGallery (2006–07), Sa Sa Art Gallery (2009), and SA SA BASSAC (2011 and 2012–13), and overseas at venues including Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2010). He was an invited participant in significant curated international group exhibitions including Underlying: Contemporary Art Exhibition from the Mekong Sub-Region (2008); Strategies from Within: Vietnamese and Cambodian Contemporary Art at Ke Center in Shanghai (2008); the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia (2009); Forever Until Now: Contemporary Art from Cambodia at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in Hong Kong (2009); Institution for the Future, part of the Asia Triennial Manchester at Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester (2011); Documenta 13 (2012); Poetic Politic at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2012), and Time of Others at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (2015).

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Collections