What's On

Vandy Rattana

There is a Khmer proverb that says: You can hear something a thousand times and not know it, yet if you see it with your eyes just once, you know. - Vandy Rattana

Between 1964 and 1975 the United States of America military dropped 2,756,941 tons (230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites) of bombs across politically neutral Cambodia. This figure went unacknowledged until 2000 when Bill Clinton traveled to Vietnam and quietly released previously classified Air Force data on American bombings in former Indochina.

Dissatisfied with the level of documentation produced on the subject, Vandy Rattana traveled to the ten Cambodian provinces most severely bombed in the U.S. military campaign during the Vietnam War. Along the way, he engaged villagers in locating and testifying to the existence of the craters made by the bombings, known in the Khmer language as the "bomb ponds".

The resultant work is a series of nine quiet, mysteriously serene landscape photographs and a confronting one-channel documentary film in which villagers describe their memories of the bombings as well as their relationship to the ponds today. The Bomb Ponds invites audiences to connect with both the fragility and the resilience of the people and the land, and to reconsider the historical thread of America's actions during the Vietnam War and subsequently, similar acts of violence worldwide.

Born into the tenuous recovery period after the official fall of the Khmer Rouge, Vandy Rattana (b.1980 Phnom Penh) is concerned with the lack of physical documentation accounting for the stories, traits, and monuments unique to his culture. His serial work employs a range of analog cameras and formats, straddling the line between strict photojournalism and artistic practice. The extensive nature of his subject matter forges against the plethora of stymied documentation on Cambodia today, and makes critical connections between present-day narratives and the historical value inherent in chronicling the contemporary moment.

Selected exhibitions by Vandy Rattana:

The Bomb Ponds, Hessel Museum, NY (2010); Fire of the Year, The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6), Brisbane, Australia (2009); Walking Through, Sa Sa Art Gallery, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2009); TADAIMA: Looking for Sweet Home, Kyushu University, Japan (2009); Magnetic Power, Asean-Korean Center, Seoul, Korea (2009); Forever Until Now: Contemporary Art From Cambodia, 10 Chancery Gallery, Hong Kong (2009); Another Asia, Noorderlicht Photo Festival, The Netherlands (2006).