— Blue Vase, 2022
— Amulet (Hevea Afzelia) n°1, 3, 2023
— Amulet (Hevea Afzelia) n°2, 2023
— Vase n°1—11, 2022
— Vase interior n°1—9, 2022
— Sculpture n°1—2, 2022–2023
— Deer Skull n°1—2, 2023
— Form n°1—8, 2022–2023
— Bone, 2023

2022
— “Souffles”, National Museum of Cambodia, travel of the exhibition displayed in 2021 at the Château Borély – musée des Arts décoratifs, de la Faïence et de la Mode, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, June 10–September 30 {artwork displayed: Blue Vase, 2022}

2024
— After Rain: Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Diriyah Biennale Foundation, Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, February 20–May 24 {artwork displayed: Amulet (Hevea Afzelia) n°2, 2023}

“In 1975, just when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, my father woke me up in the middle of the night to show me a lamp that he had made. The civil war had destroyed electricity facilities all over Cambodia, so everyone knew how to make this lamp, a simple tin can filled with coconut oil, with a cotton wick on top that was lit with the flame. We had several around the hut and they were usually quite dirty, so they would not usually be touched unless they had to be moved somewhere else. 
This lamp that my father showed me was a can that sat inside a bamboo base that was about ten centimetres high. It was basic and there was nothing decorative about it. 

My mother was next to him. My father asked me if I understood why he woke me to show me this lamp, and I said I did not. Whispering firmly and softly, he asked me to think about it harder and I tried but still could not figure out why. I was four years old at the time and I knew that it was a lamp, but that was it. So he said to me: ‘I have something important to tell you but you must never talk about this to anyone else. Can you promise?’ 

After he was sure that I had committed myself to this promise, he proceeded to remove the tin can from its bamboo base. It did not come out easily but needed to be twisted around a few times. After the can was removed, he asked me to look inside, and I peered in and saw a grey fluff of cotton. He lifted the cotton and under it something was shining. They were tiny shards and bits of gold jewelry that could have been pieces of rings and necklaces. It was not much but I could tell it was something valuable. 
This was the first time I had ever seen gold. My father told me that if something were to happen to him and my mother, and I could not find them again, the most important thing to do was to take this lamp and keep it with me. No one must ever know what was inside. But the lamp could be of great help to me when the right time came and the situation was more secure, because I could use it for light, but it would be hiding the only objects of material value that we owned as a family. I would need the lamp to survive another day. Fortunately, that time never did arrive.”

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A text based on a video interview alongside Sopheap Pich, by Bérangère Huguet, November 2023

After having experienced significant amount of time working with glass, I felt like the rosewood seed form has called me again. Having made this form in many other materials before, I wanted to see if I could make something that looks as close to the real thing as possible in glass.

When we started making the first few, I saw the potential in it. And then, we made more and I thought “Well, what if we try a different color or different kind of texture?” or just to try to get a certain kind of quality. We all got a bit excited after seeing the outcome, and so we made many seeds. And then I thought, “Oh, maybe I can combine them together?” There is a particular form… a necklace, an amulet that people attach animistic belief to in Southeast Asia. It’s a kind of charm that you wear or put in your house as a symbol for protection and brings good fortune. In Thailand, I saw amulets made specifically out of rosewood seeds. That stuck in my mind for a long time, long before I came at Cirva.

In Cambodia —and Southeast Asia in general— rosewood is a very old kind of tree. It takes at least fifty or more years before they are ready to be harvested. Ancient luxury woods of this type are very valuable and are in high demand all over the world. In Cambodia, there are two contrasting forces in nature —some are domesticated plant, like the rubber plant and palm oil, and another is the wild nature plant like the rosewood and other varieties of indigenous trees— and they have been in battle for the last 40 years, basically since we have come out of the Civil War. For a variety of reasons, the wild forest has been rapidly losing its rosewood trees, and much of it is converted to agricultural land. And one of the crops is the rubber plant.

In my sculpture, these two things together become a circular kind of idea, being the wild nature versus the domesticated, a notion of two kinds of nature in a work.

🌍 Sopheap Pich