Images on Skin: Cambodian Artist Heng Ravuth

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Images on Skin: Cambodian Artist Heng Ravuth

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Cambodian Artist Heng Ravuth Celebrates What We Live in: Our Bodies
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Artist Heng Ravuth poses with one of his paintings entitled “Hidden Face” at the art gallery Silapak Trotchaek Pneik in Phnom Penh. Photo: Reaksmey Yean
BY: Michelle Vachon June 28, 2022 12:01 PM

In his latest works, a person’s thoughts and feelings surface in series of images on his skin

PHNOM PENH—As human beings, one more element that influences our destiny is the body in which we live and the skin covering it.
This is expressed in sayings such as being comfortable, or uncomfortable, in one’s skin, or getting under a person’s skin, which means to profoundly affect that person.

And then there is the color of one’s skin that may effect how some people interact with a person.

But for artist Heng Ravuth, this goes even further. “For me, I think the body is important, maybe more than words,” he said. “With words, sometimes we can hide. But with body language, we cannot hide: Your emotions, your feelings show through your body language.

“The idea is that feelings and expressions can change who you are as a person,” he said. “And because the body is just a container…sometimes this can come out. So, the body goes beyond words.”

In Ravuth’s paintings currently exhibited at the Silapak Trotchaek Pneik (STP) gallery in Phnom Penh, what the person feels or thinks has become visible on his skin, turning into small figures, either in movement or immobile, that are going through the thoughts and emotions he may or may not decide to share with others.

Using himself as the model for the artworks, Ravuth painted on his body on canvas his facial expressions and the movements he made, second by second, while he was thinking. His thought process becomes a series of minuscule portraits of himself covering his body as if it was printed fabric.

This is as if, he explained, “like the feelings, the emotions inside your body were trying to come out…The idea is that, if you remove your clothes…the skin covering your body becomes the clothes with your body inside.” This body serves as the container of all those feelings that can change who a person is, Ravuth said. And, as he illustrates in this series of paintings, he said, “sometimes they come out.”

The exhibition runs through July 9.
The Silapak Trotchaek Pneik art gallery is located at the YK Art House, 13A Street 830, off Sothearos Boulevard), in Phnom Penh.
For more information: https://www.facebook.com/STPCambodia
https://cambodianess.com/article/cambod ... our-bodies
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