When the River Reverses takes environmental ecology as a means and metaphor to navigate and explore intersections of various forces. The exhibition takes the unique and complex phenomenon of Tonle Sap Lake to consider a range of contemporary artistic practices that address today’s concerns in a manner that emphasises complexity and contradiction.

About the artists:

Chu Hao Pei (b.1990, Singapore) works with various media. His artistic practice is informed by the shifting ecological, social and urban landscapes. By interweaving documentation and intervention as a strategy, he explores conflicts and tensions arising from state’s interventions on nature and culture. Hao Pei’s works examine loss, or potential loss, of nature and cultural heritage as a tactic to draw our attention to wider issues of environmental and cultural loss. Hao Pei is a recipient of 2017 Mutual Learning research and residency. He graduated from the School of Art, Design & Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University.

Hsu Chia-Wei (b. 1983, Taichung, Taiwan) is interested in the forgotten histories of the Cold War in Asia. His works develop a keen sensitivity that weaves together reality and illusion, history and the present. Through a critical use of film, he constructs mythical narratives that complicate and linger between fiction and reality, while exposing events, people and places that are usually excluded from the screen in the traditional history making. Chia-Wei is the Annual Grand Prize winner of 2017 Taishin Arts Award. Chia-Wei graduated from the Graduate School of Plastic Art, National Taiwan University of Art.

Piyarat Piyapongwiwat (b. 1977, Phrae, Thailand) works with various media. Her practice centers on documentation as a method to expose and question the conditions and implications of our globalised economy. Whether it is video, photograph, or installation, she often uses these media as text, image, or text-image, not merely as a record keeping, but as an attempt to map our inter-connected world through voices of individuals. Piyarat is a 2017 recipient of the Japan Foundation Asia Center Fellowship Program. Piyarat holds a BA from RMIT University, Australia and a BFA from Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Montpellier Agglomération (ESBAMA), France.

Than Sok (b. 1984, Takeo, Cambodia) investigates religious and spiritual beliefs through the examination of ritual and everyday objects. Using various media including painting, sculpture, installation, video and performance, Sok’s works usually draw attention to the notion of merit, the relationship between belief systems and their material authorities, and the power relations that these systems produce. Sok studied at Reyum Art School and Norton University, Phnom Penh.

When the River Reverses is part of Condition Report, a curatorial mentoring program initiated and generously supported by Japan Foundation Asia Center.
Special thanks: Patrick Flores and Kyongfa Che