My art work presents myself as an artist who is not distanced from contemporary society. I am very much at home in my own time and comfortable with the many lifestyles and resulting imaginations that exist. My work expresses an awareness of participating in a new, developing, and active world full of possibilities, as well as of contradictions and paradoxes. The issues raised by my art works depict the variety of today’s culture, its fascinating, rich and complex appearance which are both global and particularly local, endlessly repetitive and endlessly differentiated. While visual aspects are the dominant dimension of this world, they are nevertheless inseparably connected to other fields. This is reflected not only in the multitude of sources I take my inspiration from (personal snapshot, old photography from family albums, sign panels’ images etc.) but perhaps no less in the fact that I am myself dealing with other media (drawing, installations, sculpture and photography). In such a world, painting can be only one of several possible and equally interesting creative mediums.
Saphan was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, Saphan took residence for over two decades in Canada and France. She went on to graduate from the University of Paris in 2007 with a PhD in Social Anthropology and a BA in Khmer Studies.
Saphan’s passion for art and her love of Khmer culture has made her one of the most prominent and encouraging voices in the Cambodian art scene. As one of the organizers of the Visual Arts Open festival in Cambodia and a founder and coordinator of the Selapak Neari program, Saphan has supported and helped give exposure to women artists across Cambodia. Additionally, the artist launched the Art Rebels Association (a local association of young artists), and curated a group show of 18 international and Cambodian female artists at the Ministry of Culture.
Saphan’s work has been included in several collective exhibitions throughout Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore, France, and the US. Today she is living and working in Greenwich Village,
