Born in a warzone in Cambodia in 1970, artist Leang Seckon spent his childhood during a violent period in the country’s history of the covert US Air Force bombing operation for the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge (1975 - 79). Growing up during the Rouge, he witnessed the atrocities of the regime and the suffering caused by them.

Influenced by his personal history, Seckon’s practice has been deeply autobiographical with intimate narratives of his childhood memories often juxtaposed with social and political commentaries and pop culture references. Working with the medium of collage and canvas, he often stitches the found material from magazines, pamphlets and newspapers with textile elements into the composition.

The act of stitching, however, is a vital aspect of his life connected to his birth. As the artist describes, during the bombings, when his mother was pregnant with him, it was the heavy-skirt of his mother that saved him. The sole skirt that she was wearing and to which she kept adding weight by stitching scraps of clothing found near her was what protected him when their town was bombed. The story is often presented and narrated through his performance The Universe of his Mother’s Skirt.

Stitching and weaving have since been an integral part of his artmaking. In the densely painted compositions of his visually abstract canvases like Wish for Protection and Old is New, he uses leather and the ‘reverse-stitch’ to create works reminiscent of modern southeast asian sensibility merged with elements of folk figuration.

Reimagining the boundaries of social, political and environmental exchanges, his paintings and collages are a convergence of the happenings in and around him both from the past and the present. With material collected from cities and places, he visits around the world, inhabiting the spaces and cultures, the works are a culmination of these experiences.

Following the group exhibition Out of Line at Akar Prakar, Delhi curated by Erin Gleeson in 2019 where he showcased his works and as the recipient of the inaugural ArtVarta Residency in collaboration with the Khoj International Artists’ Association, this exhibition marks the conclusion of the residency. The artworks in this exhibition highlight the osmosis of ideas and cultures between the two nations rooted in their shared religious and pop-cultural narratives.

- Siddhi Shailendra

Leang Seckon (b. 1970)

Born in Prey Veng province, Cambodia in 1970, artist Leang Seckon completed his graduation in 2002 from the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh. Among the foremost members of the emerging Cambodian contemporary art scene, Leang Seckon, in the early 1970s at the onset of the American bombings of Indochina grew up during the rise of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

His selected solo and group exhibitions internationally include the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Michigan, USA (2023); documenta fifteen, with Sa Sa Art Projects, Kassel, Germany (2022); Leang Seckon Prophecy, Macnichols Civic Center, Denver, USA (2019); Out of Line at Akar Prakar, Delhi (2019); Rebirth Revitalise Regeneration, National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2017); Mekong New Mythologies, Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong (2016); the Thematic Exhibition, Shanghai Biennale (2012); Kathmandu International Art Festival, Nepal (2012) and Hell on Earth, Rossi & Rossi, London, UK (2014); 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) held at Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia in (2015); 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Japan in (2009); the ASEAN New Zero Contemporary Art Exchange, Yangon, Myanmar, also in (2009), and his Rubbish Project (2008) a public project in Phnom Penh.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies such as the ArtVarta Residency in collaboration with Khoj Artists’ Association, 2023; Residency at Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, 2013; Residency at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, 2009 and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, The Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong in 2009 to name few. The artist lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.