Kanitha Tith: Moel Knong by A+ WORKS of ART

Table of Contents

Introduction

4 It’s Up to Them: Kanitha Tith interviewed by Roger Nelson 28 Along and Against: The Untranslated Works of Kanitha Tith by Roger Nelson 66

About the Artist and Curator

This catalogue is published in conjunction with Moel Knong, a solo exhibition by Kanitha Tith. Curated by Roger Nelson. Held at A+ WORKS of ART, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 2nd December 2023 to 27th January 2024.

Introduction

A+ Works of Art presents Moel Knong, a solo exhibition by the internationally celebrated artist Kanitha Tith (1987–), who lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is Kanitha’s first solo exhibition in Malaysia. The exhibition Moel Knong by Kanitha Tith features sculptures, paintings and drawings that foreground the artist’s laborious, meditative, and repetitive processes, entangling the artist’s inner life with abstract reflections on Cambodia’s troubled modern history. Moel Knong follows Kanitha’s acclaimed presentation at the 58th Carnegie International in 2022, where she was the first artist from Cambodia invited to show work in the prestigious biennial exhibition’s 126-year-long history. The exhibition title is untranslated; this suggests the limits of language and the poetic openness of Kanitha’s artistic practice. How do we see, and what is within? Like many things (in life and in the art of Kanitha Tith), the Khmer expression moel knong is not easily translatable. In the simplest terms, moel is to look, and knong is inside—but when the words are combined, moel knong takes on an array of meanings ranging from the medical to the existential, encompassing the mundane and quotidian as well as the technical and highly specialized. In this way, the title reflects and extends the exhibition.

Kanitha Tith interviewed by Roger Nelson

I T ’ S

UP TO

THEM

This interview was conducted in writing in October and November 2023, in preparation for the exhibition, Moel Knong, at A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, in December 2023 and January 2024.

It’s Up to Them Roger Nelson “Now I associate myself with Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 mainstream movie, and I think it’s time to go back to face that reality.” You said that in our interview for the catalogue of the 58th Carnegie International in 2022.1 What was the “reality” you were trying to face then, and what is it now? What films, songs, or other works of literature and art have accompanied you as you’ve made the artworks for this new solo exhibition at A+ Works of Art? Kanitha Tith To begin with the film Mad Max: Fury Road, I forgot the full story. At first when I saw the film back in 2015 I didn’t like it much, because I thought it’s weird: why make such an effort to escape the place that is controlled by the tyrant who rules over a stark desert and controls everything, and then the heroes decided to go back! (Laugh!) Then I realized later, I slowly grasped the essence of the film, which I started to appreciate better. And that’s how I talked about this film when we did the interview in 2022 for the Carnegie catalogue. This reality, which is from my own interpretation and what I’m facing, is the same and not the same throughout time. With a good distance—I spent more than two years outside Cambodia for an artist’s residency programme—I got to explore the whole world through people who came from different cultures, spaces and times. Through this experience, I became fascinated to see how much we have in common in terms of our relationships, through family, country, society, geography, politics and life that they are dealing with, some are joyful, some are sad, some have anger, fear, some are disappointed, some are broken, carried by their past trauma, some are guilty, some are confused, some are jealous, some are lost, it’s just everything. I managed to create the habit of watching films. At first I thought it was an easy thing to do but it wasn’t at the start: after five minutes of film, I started to fall asleep and then I would have to finish watching the film the day after. Everybody thinks that watching movies is easy, but for me it is not. But it is worth it. Watching films has become a great pleasure. So I always try to take time to watch more films, as much as I can.

Kanitha Tith interviewed by Roger Nelson

I don’t have a specific topic to listen to or watch while I’m making my work, but I can share some of the recent titles that I watched, listened and read (but not yet finished). Films: I Can’t Sleep, 1994, by Claire Denis Avatar, 2009, by James Cameron. It was the first time that I watched this film, in the cinema last year in Phnom Penh. Signs, 2002, by M. Night Shyamalan The Fablemans, 2022, by Steven Spielberg Diary of a Country Priest, 1951, by Robert Bresson La Notte (The Night), 1961, by Michelangelo Antonioni Time to Live, A Time to Die, 1985, by Hou Hsiao-Hsien The Tenant, 1975, by Roman Polanski Books: Brother Enemy: The War After the War, 1986, by Nayan Chanda (in Khmer translation) Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh, 2022, by Jenna Grant Listening: RFI, Radio France International Khmer programme, by Im Rachna, on the history of Khmer literature Ponleu Association, general knowledge of philosophers and Khmer history Random music on YouTube for fun, mainly pop music and a lot of children’s songs RN

Process is a particularly pregnant part of your artistic practice. This exhibi-

tion includes several sculptures made with wire, using a process you have returned to repeatedly for over a decade. There are also two different bodies of work on paper, which incorporate new processes which you have only begun to develop over the past two years. One series is made with watercolour and a brush, and you refer to these works as paintings. The other series is made with acrylic paint and your wire sculptures, and you refer to these works as drawings. Can you please describe the processes for making these three types of work? TK

Yes it’s true, I have worked on wire for over a decade now, but I still love it. I came to break my fear by drawing and painting; I can’t really explain what

that is exactly. And being abstract helps to create a sense of no boundary, so I man-

It’s Up to Them aged to overcome my fear of doing it. I feel like now my sculptures can express their own feelings through that (acrylic drawing). And then with watercolour, I can reconnect the love of colour that I used to feel, but that I put on the side for quite a while when I couldn’t reach or grasp what does it mean to be a full body. So I would say, my sculptures have found their missing pieces, and that’s enough now to start connecting them to the others. Because I can’t write well, there is a way out with drawing and painting. I managed to put out all my feelings and thoughts, through line, through colour, and then, step by step, I can understand why there is such a long history about those things. And when it comes to that history, I need time for dealing with it. I trained in classical painting before I studied for my Bachelor in Interior Architecture from the Fine Art school. So I used to love colours. But then when I found my practice in making wire sculptures, I decided to take out colour. And now I come back to my passion for colours. Hmm, it looks like it’s the same, but the other way round. (Like Mad Max, laugh!) I just called my works “drawing” or “painting” based on the relationship that I have when working with those materials. The acrylic works I call “drawing” because I use wire as my brush, to scratch softly on the smooth surface of paper. I felt that no matter how much you try to be light and soft, this act will have its consequences. Because the touch creates the scratch, like someone used to be there, but is no longer there, like a shadow that is haunting, like a bomb that flashes and creates a permanent hole, like something that wants to appear but has lost pieces of itself, like a wound that heals but remains a scar, like another life that has just started, For my watercolour paintings, I like to see how the transformation from wet to dry changes how the final work will be. I enjoy the fact that I can’t control the fluidity of water. The combination of different layers in each brush stroke is super enchanting. And for the choice of colour, I just follow my sensation. RN

In the past, you’ve said that “abstraction…has become the core of [your]

practice” but that you feel that you “don’t own the ‘abstract’ as a word, and or its meanings or the history of where it comes from.”2 What are your thoughts about abstraction, in relation to the works in this exhibition? Some of the paintings here in fact have figurative sources, such as family photographs; would you like to speak about your compositional strategies and processes?

Kanitha Tith interviewed by Roger Nelson

I think this question of “abstraction” I will keep asking all my life. Since my first discovery in art that through making an installation using

everyday materials, I could transform it into a conceptual work, I was so triggered by that, I felt so free. This sensation was like fresh air that I could breathe, like facing the open sky with good weather for the first time. But back then, I associated this feeling with “freedom”, the freedom that I wanted to have from history, politics, my identity, and just being who I am. One day, I was preparing my studio and I came across my photo archive, including my family photos. And then one thought arrived: let’s paint some figures to see how I feel about that. After I tried it, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t fall in love. Interestingly, I looked in detail, and saw that the expressions of my mom, dad and siblings, are all coming from one particular direction. I mean the photographer, who directed the way we posed, as well as the way of smiling, and the background and light, to create the image. And the photographer followed the wishes of one family who was looking for a happiness to keep as their memory and for their own archive. Maybe I think that I couldn’t understand that notion of happiness. So I can’t go further than what I know is being abstract. Because I can’t believe in what I see, I need to sense what it means. And that meaning doesn’t have to be clear as a form, it just has to have a sense, smell and texture, and I wonder about it, and it is enough for me. RN

In the last two years, your mother has passed away, and you have given

birth to your first child. Would you like to say something about the impact of these events on your artistic practice? TK

I was inspired for the title Moel Knong from reading my anthropologist friend,

Jenna Grant, and her book Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh. Through the book I came to understand more about the health system in Cambodia, particularly related to pregnancy and a bit of how the health system in Cambodia started after 1979. I never quite understood this before my mom spent her last time at the hospital. After the death of my mom, I have no one to discuss with or to pass on the knowledge of how to take care during pregnancy and postpartum. So the only way to prepare myself was to do my own research, and thanks to Jenna’s research, I could enter another perspective in life. I was greatly affected by the loss of my beloved mom. I don’t know what words to say when I see one life goes and one life starts. How can I face that? I can never understand that phenomenon, but I accepted it. The presence of my son has brought me love, joy and beauty to see how one life is needed to continue and beyond.

It’s Up to Them RN

Many Cambodians believe that an image, especially a sculpture, can pos-

sess a spirit or a soul. What are your thoughts and feelings about these beliefs? Are they relevant to your artworks? TK

I grew up with a Christian family, because my mom switched her religion

after the Khmer Rouge. She lost hope in Buddhist practice. Even though I don’t practise Buddhism, animism or other beliefs, nevertheless, Khmer traditions still remain in me through the environment that I grew up with. My friends, neighbours, relatives, and society share their stories about ghosts and about their beliefs. They say: “if you believe, you will see it.” And, “if you don’t believe it, don’t look down on it.” So somehow, I don’t believe and I do believe. When I don’t believe is when I can ask questions, and when I do believe is because I get used to it, I grew up with it. For example: When I did a fashion photo shoot with my friend around the little forest not far from the gate of the Bayon temple in Siem Reap, I stood next to it and remembered all the stories that I used to hear that in general when people go to the forest or any unknown place, people need to do some prayer or offering to the spirits that belong to that area. Otherwise they will not be happy that you invade their place, and they can make you sick after you return home. But then for me I asked, why should I be scared about this belief? Because I belong to the country, so everything belongs to me too. And I’m here just taking photos, I’m not here to take somebody’s land. For my work, I better let the audience decide whether they want to believe or not; it’s up to them.

Untitled 2020–2021 Acrylic on acid free 300g paper 120 x 85 cm

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Along and Against: The Untranslated Works of Kanitha Tith by Roger Nelson

“I can’t really explain what that is exactly,” says Kanitha

friendly relationship to her body—they are never too

Tith in the interview in this catalogue. It’s a typical

large, and never too small—and also to each other. “I

statement from the artist, who luxuriates in indirectness

think it makes sense that the sculptures can enjoy look-

and imprecision, insistently unfixing her words and her

ing at the drawings,” she says.2 Regardless of whether

artworks so that they may range widely and freely over

or not they resemble anything else in the world (or, to

landscapes both actual and metaphorical. “My approach

put it another way, whether or not they are abstract),

is mostly intuitive,” she admits in another interview.

her artworks seem almost like characters in a movie in

For Kanitha, the limitations inherent in language—its

which I also have a role to perform.

struggle to render in words what is felt deeply in the flesh and realised slowly over time—offer an opportunity,

“This one looks like something bodily,” some-

as if opening a window through which we may wander.

one says as we are installing the artworks. Intestines or lungs, bones or blood vessels? Other works are

In more than a decade of knowing Kanitha and

given nicknames: the fishcake, the mermaid, the hair.

thinking with her practice, I have come to realise some

But their shapeshifting, sometimes inexplicably “scary”

things which I struggle to convey in words. First, I have

appearance is only one part of what is so engrossing

come to appreciate the openness of her artworks—their

about these artworks. The very particular processes

easy embrace of a wide range of interpretations, and

of making them—all that time and labour and care and

their refusal to be tied to a specific meaning. Second,

futility and feeling—these processes are wound tightly.

I enjoy the way her practice seems to slow down time.

Kanitha’s artworks are traces of their making, and they

And third, I recognise that her works have a kind of

also transcend that process.

Along and Against

Speaking about “the first touch (almost like

Like many things, moel knong is not easily translatable.

the first brush stroke)” which she likes to “just follow,”

In Khmer, to moel is to look and to see, but also to care,

the artist says:

to care for and to watch over. You might moel a child, or a loved one. But to moel is also to inspect, to check

I appreciate this first touch, though I can’t de-

and to test. You might moel a motorbike after servicing,

scribe it well. It feels fresh, without any concern

and a doctor might moel your blood or your uterus dur-

or worry about anything else. I just think and it

ing a check-up or an ultrasound. To be able to moel is

comes out right away. It’s easy and immediate,

to have sight, but also to possess skills; to be able to

like the way I choose to present my work: put-

read signs, or even to be a seer. With a similar polyse-

ting the drawings on the floor and hanging the

my, the knong is the inside, but also the interior, even

sculptures from the walls and ceiling.

the innards. A room is knong a house and a stomach is

knong a belly and a soul is knong a body. Knong is the Her interventions in the audience’s engagement

spatial, spiritual, and corporeal within.

with her artworks are considered, precise, and decisive, yet they are also gentle, generous, and guided by a light-

The sculptures, drawings, watercolour paint-

ness of touch. “For my work I better let the audience

ings, and installations in Moel Knong by Kanitha Tith are

decide whether they want to believe or not; it’s up to

also not easily translatable. The works emerge from

them,” she says in the interview in this catalogue.

various processes devised and obsessively repeated by the artist. These processes are material, enfleshed,

This exhibition is titled Moel Knong, and be-

intuitive, and unplanned; they include coiling, conjoining,

fore suggesting what function this title may have for the

dipping, dragging, and pooling. The works also emerge

artist, I would like to first suggest that it’s up to you.

from various momentous life events, include birth, discovery, suffering, and death. These experiences have

***

defined the artist’s life during the past year: a son has arrived, and a mother departed. In a different way, fateful events have shaped the lives of many in her community during the past half-century: after a prolonged reticence to address these difficult topics, Kanitha now feels that Cambodia’s modern history of war, genocide, and recovery raises questions that she cannot escape. Yet to address these questions—to ask, what if?—she insists on seeking her own language and forms. Many Cambodians believe that beliefs should be followed: that a sculpture has a soul, for example, or that abstract forms are derived from nature. Kanitha resists these ways of thinking; for her, artistic practice has always been a pursuit of what she calls “freedom.” To moel is also to seek; the knong is hidden, but it is also held tightly.

Roger Nelson

*** I am not surprised to find that the book, Against Translation by the American poet Alan Shapiro, opens with a poem of the same title.4 The poem, “Against Translation,” opens with an evocation (but also an instantiation) of musical language, the kind of language in which the shape and sound matters most: The songs swept down from the northern steppes And, as if to evoke the rhythm and melody and elusiveness of the songs, the poem continues with a second line, just three words, one of which makes me stumble, searching for its definition: with cinerary horse I look away from the poem on the page to the screen of my device, which confirms that cinerary is usually used together with urn; the word is an adjective that specifies something as being intended for holding ashes, especially those of a cremated corpse. I return to the poem, beginning again; after another few lines dusted with macabre images—“flesh burnt”—we return, or so I imagine, to the song. […] on a ladder made of air […] Writing this, now, just to be clear, I’ve added the parenthesised ellipses; they aren’t a part of the poem, but the symmetry of their placement in these lines shows how this waft of verse and music wraps around itself, at once telling and being a tale. And it continues, for another few lines, and then a new stanza, and another startling word choice: And now, the steel tips of our devices

Along and Against

This time, the diction is startling not for its

And the comma there again gives just the briefest of

unfamiliarity but rather for its defamiliarisation. I am old

pauses, but no pause will ever be quite enough to re-

enough to remember when this word, devices, was not

cover from these lines, this usage of untranslated in a

habitually used with reference to electronics; now, I

way that does not just defy expectations, but offends

rarely come across it coupled with anything else. But

the senses; if only these bones of babies could be

these devices, the ones described in the poem, are not

those songs swept down from the northern steppes

for communication but rather for exhumation:

and if only those steppes could be steps, down which I could stumble or up which I could flee. But they are

dig, sort through

not, and I cannot, and the poem ends, after another new stanza, with a reminder of my immobility, and a

An unease is creeping. I stop reading for a moment and suspect that the songs with which the

suggestion that I’m mired in and coated with this dust and ash that I have been reading in:

poem began may be funereal; after the suggestion of ashes and the mention of flesh burnt I prepare myself

freshened the black

for the likelihood that what is being dug, sorted through,

sucking at their feet.

is more probably human than anything else. This chilling realisation is nourished, deepened, as the poem digs— and describes a digging—that continues:

The full stop there at last gives a longer pause, a pause that begins as a relief but then is quickly crept into by a horrible remembrance of not just those bones

beneath ghost towns

of babies but also the unsettling insistence that they are

the ghosts have all abandoned,

untranslated which is an insistence that is as mysterious as it is frightening and foul.

The comma there gives just the briefest of pauses, giving pause before I read on, another line and

***

then another, each line break slowing me for a shorter

Foods—and with that abrupt transition from corpses to

moment, as I read and almost rush, headlong, into a word

the culinary, I am morbidly mimicking the poem’s scary

that ties me a back to the title of this poem—“Against

hideousness—such as char kway teow and naan and

Translation”—and also to the title of this book, Against

croissant and ikan bilis are very often untranslated.

Translation, but performs this reminder with the most

Untranslated because untranslatable, but not really:

shocking—literally, shocking—and unexpected image

fried noodles and flat bread and pastry and anchovy

of what it is that might be untranslated. Having been

would do just as well. Well, but not quite: when foods

guided to a place, a zone under humus, under topsoil,

are untranslated, it is often or at least in part to retain

under subsoil, a place beneath ghost towns, the poem

something of their specificity.

continues: And so it is with feelings, too. Schadenfreude all we unearth

and paiseh and hygge and all those other famously un-

intact now

translatable emotions are untranslatable because they

are the untranslated

describe a sense so particular that it cannot be rendered

bones of babies,

otherwise. Their definitions disappoint, in a way that recalls the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s

Roger Nelson

insistence that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, or perhaps even the Cambodian choreographer and cultural worker Chheng Phon’s insistence that, when faced with the unspeakable, we simply cannot speak.5 It can never be said. There is a limit to the words of humans, there is a border containing that which we can say. Which recalls, of course, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno’s insistence that to write poetry…is barbaric. These words, with their surprising juxtaposition of moods, and also with their surprising juxtaposition of an activity which is continuous and changing (“to write”) and a categorical judgement which is fixed and final (“is barbaric”), and also with their simplicity, point to the chasm between aesthetic experiences—making art, writing poems—and other realms of life, such as mass murder, collective violence, enforced starvation.6 And, like Adorno, Chheng Phon is describing something very particular and yet indescribable: We cannot speak at all, we cannot describe a suffering that has no boundary, that is limitless. And it is this insistence on impossibility that stays with me, even longer than the other impossibility, which Chheng Phon has mentioned just a few lines before it: Did anyone among the four million Khmer who have survived the killing not suffer at the hands of the Pol Pot group? And now—from the poetry of songs to the putrescence of the bones of babies to the particularity of foods to the ponderousness of feelings to the unsayable and unknowable crime of, for lack of a better

Along and Against

word, genocide, and even the unsayable and unknow-

To be untranslated is to be free, to be un-

able state of being among its survivors—I have coiled

moored from specificity and thus to evade closure. This

these words around themselves, like the wire that the

I learn from Kanitha’s artwork.

artist winds around itself, into a tight spring-like state of both readiness and uselessness.

*** And yet to be untranslated can also be hideous and

***

terrifying, like the

Freedom is what Kanitha always says she’s looking for, what makes her want to be and actually be and continue

untranslated

to be an artist. Freedom from certain types of labour, per-

bones of babies

haps, and freedom from certain expectations of behaviour, perhaps, but also—and this is why I learn from listening to

Which we came across—or rather, if I may

the artworks in Moel Knong refusing to speak—freedom

belabour the image, dug up—just a moment ago, almost

from certain limitations of expression, which is to say,

in the same breath. Is there anything even remotely so

freedom from certainty, freedom from saying things that

scary in Kanitha’s work? Perhaps not, but these sculp-

can’t be said or shouldn’t be said or needn’t be said and

tures and drawings and paintings and installations are

will cease to be songs once they are said.

traces—sediments, perhaps—of something that may be just as unimaginable.

Whether or not it is “abstract” and whether or not its process can be called “meditative” and whether

But perhaps you can imagine? It’s up to you.

or not it is “beautiful” Kanitha’s artwork is always untranslated.

1. Kanitha Tith, quoted in Roger Nelson, “From Wire into Line: Kanitha Tith,” in Is it Morning for You Yet? 58th Carnegie International, ed, Ryan Inouye, Sohrab Mohebbi, Talia Heiman (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 2022). 2. Kanitha Tith, quoted in Nelson, “From Wire into Line.” 3. Kanitha Tith, quoted in Nelson, “From Wire into Line.” 4. Alan Shapiro, “Against Translation,” in Against Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 3–4.

5. Chheng Phon, “Views of a Representative of Artists” (1983), trans. Roger Nelson, in The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader, ed. T.K. Sabapathy and Patrick D. Flores (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, 2023), 1165–1168. 6. Chheng Phon was writing in 1983, four years after Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown; Adorno was writing in 1949, four years after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime was overthrown. Adorno wrote, to quote him without abridgement, that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

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