“Sam’s multidisciplinary practice traces cultural hybridity, queer futurity, religious iconography, and the fabulation of a marred political history between the U.S. and Cambodia.”
From the team at the Distillery Gallery in South Boston:
A sumptuous journey through queer temporality, SOPHEAK SAM: រង់ចាំចូលនិព្វន Waiting for Enlightenment opens June 1st in celebration of Pride Month and is the first in a series of new exhibitions and programming at the Distillery Gallery beginning summer 2022.
The Distillery Gallery joins artist Sopheak Sam (b. 1989, Thai-Cambodian border) in welcoming their first solo presentation of multidisciplinary works ranging from mixed media drawings, paintings, prints, books, and video.
Time is played by a serpent in រង់ចាំចូលនិព្វន Waiting for Enlightenment. Traversing picture planes and video screens, the serpent is a pervasive multidimensional being, but like other symbolic beings of western evil and sin, it is demonized for ruination or pillaged for pleasure—never permitted a peaceful journey to self transformation or enlightenment. Sam’s multidisciplinary practice traces cultural hybridity, queer futurity, religious iconography, and the fabulation of a marred political history between the U.S. and Cambodia.
A child refugee born in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide, the artist’s personal entanglement with the historicization of the Khmer experience posits the exhibition as an embodied site for individual and collective searching. Crawled from an existential fever dream, the serpent is an avatar that cruises through liminal spaces of representation, duality, belonging, spirituality, and utopia. It is birthed infinitely from a recurring cycle of displacement, loss, and love.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an intimate publication created in collaboration between Sopheak Sam and Melissa Teng, City of Boston Artist-in-Residence. A reception with refreshments will take place Saturday, June 11, 7-10 pm.
Read more about the show here
Check out the Distillery Gallery online here
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