Sopheap Pich
Born in Battambang, 1971 and lives in Battambang, Cambodia
His sculptures utilize traditional Cambodian materials, which reflect, in subtle ways, the history of the nation and the artist’s complex relation to his identity.
After he finishing his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 he returned to Cambodia. It was a monumental experience for Pich to go back home, to the same place he’d had to quickly evacuate in his formative years because of the refugee crisis going on at the time. Pich’s trip back home renewed and reunited him with his culture identity, which impacts his art work. He uses local material mostly found in Cambodia, for example bamboo. Pich creates a wide range of different of works from sculptures to paints. His sculptures are usually quite large, some are high enough to touch the top of an art gallery’s ceiling. Many of Pich’s first creations were destroyed and recycled because there was no place to store them. He has many of the only rare photographs of this first works.