The Art of Ikat: A Cambodian Renaissance
In 1975 and until 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime turned Cambodia into a communist peasant dictatorship. With rural populations being displaced and arable land requisitioned for collectivised rice farming, artisanal silk weaving and fibre production nearly fully stopped. During that period, the National Museum of Cambodia, located in Phnom Penh and founded in 1919 during the French protectorate was shut down and closed until the collapse of the regime. After its reopening in 1979, more than three-quarters of its textile collection was missing, most likely due to looting and environmental degradation.
Image courtesy of National Museum of Cambodia. Image above courtesy of Chinalai Tribal Antiques.
All of the polychrome weft ikat (sampot hol / សំពត់ ហូល) and the religious pictorial ikat hangings (hol pidan / ហូលពិដាន), two highly recognisable types of Cambodian textiles, had disappeared. Since the 1920s, these precious silks had been collected and cared for by successive museum curators from museum founder George Groslier to Jean Boisselier, Madeleine Giteau and first Cambodian director Chea Thay Seng until the early 1970s.
Image courtesy of National Museum of Cambodia
The Art of Ikat: A Cambodian Renaissance sheds light on the formation and subsequent loss of this textile collection and the devastating effects of the Cambodian civil war and Khmer Rouge regime on textiles as material culture and heritage. To this end, the exhibition explores the art and practice of ikat, hol (ហូល) in Khmer, a resist-dyed weaving technique mastered in Cambodia, and the significance of figurative and auspicious motifs used in Buddhist pidan ikat hangings. To exemplify the vitality of Cambodian arts, three artists are invited to create new pieces echoing this lost collection, based on the missing objects’ pictures and descriptions found in the cataloguing records recovered post-conflict at the National Museum of Cambodia. Facing this history of conflict which has led to the tremendous loss of artefacts and ancestral know-how, these creators embrace the vitality and resilience of Cambodian arts relying on the power of making, memory, and imagination.
All of the polychrome weft ikat (sampot hol / សំពត់ ហូល) and the religious pictorial ikat hangings (hol pidan / ហូលពិដាន), two highly recognisable types of Cambodian textiles, had disappeared. Since the 1920s, these precious silks had been collected and cared for by successive museum curators from museum founder George Groslier to Jean Boisselier, Madeleine Giteau and first Cambodian director Chea Thay Seng until the early 1970s.
The Art of Ikat: A Cambodian Renaissance sheds light on the formation and subsequent loss of this textile collection and the devastating effects of the Cambodian civil war and Khmer Rouge regime on textiles as material culture and heritage. To this end, the exhibition explores the art and practice of ikat, hol (ហូល) in Khmer, a resist-dyed weaving technique mastered in Cambodia, and the significance of figurative and auspicious motifs used in Buddhist pidan ikat hangings. To exemplify the vitality of Cambodian arts, three artists are invited to create new pieces echoing this lost collection, based on the missing objects’ pictures and descriptions found in the cataloguing records recovered post-conflict at the National Museum of Cambodia. Facing this history of conflict which has led to the tremendous loss of artefacts and ancestral know-how, these creators embrace the vitality and resilience of Cambodian arts relying on the power of making, memory, and imagination.
Image courtesy of National Museum of Cambodia
The Art of Ikat: A Cambodian Renaissance is on show at Royal Library of Denmark - Copenhagen University Library Søndre Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 7, 2300 Copenhagen S, until 31 May 2024.
Find out more:
www.traditionaltextilecraft.dk/exhibition-tex-kr
2024 is the International Year of Batik, see batikinternational.com for details, and in issue 117, collector Rudolf Smend explains why he is drawn to the apex of the craft practices in Indonesia. Yet this one technique has many forms of expression, from the Arabic-inspired designs of Nazek Hamdi to the precise patterns achieved in Miao batik from China. Is it its versatility that makes resist dying irresistible?
Our upcoming online symposium, Irresistible, will explore the irresistible nature of resist-dyed textiles from around the world. The online event will be hosted on Zoom on Saturday 8 June. Book your ticket here.