Roger Nelson

About Sa Sa Art Projects:

Sa Sa Art Projects is Phnom Penh's only not-for-profit artist-run space, and was founded in 2010 by one of Cambodia’s only artists’ collectives, Stiev Selapak. Located in the historic, vibrant and dilapidated apartment complex known as The White Building, Sa Sa Art Projects aims to foster a community of knowledge sharing and to create opportunities for emerging Cambodian artists to realise new ideas. We serve as a venue to accommodate experimental art practices, residencies, talks and occasional exhibitions designed by and for residents in our marginalized community. We also run Cambodia’s only regular classes in contemporary art, offered free every week to low-income Cambodians in our fragile neighbourhood.

Unlike almost every other art space in the country, Sa Sa Art Projects is wholly operated by Cambodian artists, for Cambodians.

About our Experimental Artists’ Residency program:

Experimentation is one of Sa Sa Art Projects’ central aims and values. Working to rebuild and strengthen contemporary art in Cambodia, we emphasize the importance of learning together. Today, there is zero government support for contemporary art in Cambodia, and 90% of our country’s artists and intellectuals were killed during Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime of 1975-79.

We’ve hosted local and international artists before, and there are now a couple of other spaces doing this as well. But opportunities for artists to learn through experimentation are still limited. What few residencies there are available tend to mostly support activities that will result in an exhibition. While this is important, our aim is to complement this context. As the only residency program wholly operated by Cambodians, ours will enrich the nation’s cultural landscape.

We believe that in Cambodia today, the challenge is to find out what else could be possible. Artists need to take risks, and need the freedom to not have to worry about a final outcome. The Experimental Artists’ Residency program we want to host at Sa Sa Art Projects will not ask artists to make work for an exhibition. In fact, it will give artists freedom to do anything they want. Artists will be encouraged to try new ways to use different media; any and all ideas are possible, as long as they are new.

In short, artists are asked to explore new possibilities for art. This is a challenge, encouraging artists to be more creative than ever, and also a call for Cambodian and international audiences to think expansively about the breadth of what might constitute art.

How will it work?

- Residencies will last six weeks each, and will run continuously from January 2013 for one year.

- Two artists in residence will be invited from neighbouring countries and internationally; the remainder of artists will be Cambodian. The Cambodian artists will be drawn from across the country, including from The White Building community in which Sa Sa Art Projects is based.

- Artists will be asked to keep a journal to record their experiments. It’ll be up to them what parts of this journal they want to make public through our website.

- Periodically throughout the year, we will publish short texts and images recording the process. These will be published in Khmer and English, in print and online. In a country with very few written materials on contemporary art, and no publisher dedicated to this subject, the publication of such records by Cambodians is vitally important for our arts community’s development and sense of history.

- At the end of the 12 months, we’ll hold an exhibition showcasing selected highlights of the residencies.

Who will make the decisions?

- Residencies will be awarded by application and by invitation.

- Stiev Selapak, one of Cambodia’s only artists’ collectives, will assess these applications. Our members are among Cambodia’s most actively exhibiting artists, nationally and internationally.

- We are: Khvay Samnang, one of Art Radar Asia’s most-searched Asian artists in 2012 and a two-time recipient of a Tokyo Wonder Site residency, who has exhibited in twelve countries to date; Lim Sokchanlina, who this year has exhibited in Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Vietnam, Thailand and the US; and Vuth Lyno, who was included in 2011’s Chongqing Youth Biennale, was visual art curator of the 2012 Cambodian Youth Arts Festival, and is a 2013 recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue postgraduate study in art history in the US.

How will we use your money?

- All funds raised will be used directly to support our Experimental Artists’ Residency program. We are a non-profit space, we are not an NGO, we have no hidden overheads and no other sources of income.

- Each artist in residence will be given space to live and work within Sa Sa Art Projects.

- Each artist in residence will be awarded limited funds to cover costs of materials, as well as a modest stipend — enough to support them during the residency so that they can devote their time to experimenting with art. Today in Cambodia, the vast majority of artists do not have studio spaces, and there are very few grant schemes available.

- We’ll use your money to cover rent and other costs of the Sa Sa Art Projects space, to cover the stipend we’ll award to artists in residence, and to cover the costs of the related publications and end of year exhibition. And that’s it.

- There is zero government support for contemporary art in Cambodia. Sa Sa Art Projects has received funding from Arts Network Asia and the British Embassy for one previous project, but has no ongoing source of funding and no other source of income for the Experimental Artists’ Residency program – other than YOU.

Any questions?

We’d love to hear from you. Send an email (in English or Khmer) to [email protected]. You can also find out more about Sa Sa Art Projects on our website: www.sasaart.info.