Community art practice in ‘One Hundred Hands’
By Danielle Khleang

Kanha Hul, ‘Mend’, 2021, photo, acrylic, graphite 40 x 60cm. One of the most recent artworks created by Kanha Hul, ‘Mend’, as part of the One Hundred Hand series, plays with the traditional Cambodian proverb “women have 100 hands” to demonstrate the value of women in society. Image courtesy of Open Studio Cambodia.

The 22-year-old Kanha Hul has all the aspirations you would hope to see in a rising visual artist reshaping what it means to be a woman in Cambodia. Since joining the Siem Reap-based Open Studio Cambodia in 2019, the young artist has exhibited her mixed-media photography at national and international galleries including Galerie Lee in Paris, France. Her first internationally recognised series, ‘Body’ (2020), confronted the widely popular Cambodian proverb “men are like gold, women are like white cloth.”

By overlaying gold paint on staged photographs of women and girls from her home village in Kralanh District, rural Cambodia, Kanha illustrates how women – like men – can recover from the stains of life to shine brightly. In her latest series, ‘One Hundred Hands’ (2020), she continues the gold motif but rather than disrupt, she reappropriates the proverb “women have 100 hands” to uplift the many roles women lead in society.

With support from the Treeline Artist Grant, Kanha conceptualised and implemented the ‘One Hundred Hands’ series in three phases: qualitative research, community workshop, and visual art production. Through this three-phased approach – which emphasises collaboration and participation – the artist’s series bends spatial and temporal boundaries as the visual component is only a remnant of the experiential impact of the artistic process.

Knowing she wanted to explore the multiplicity of the 100 hands proverb, she first went door to door, holding interviews with her neighbours to learn their stories and concerns. From these conversations, she realised that women in her community were isolated during the day while working at home. To bring them together, she invited them to exchange their old sarongs for new ones at a one-day workshop. Kanha initiated this exchange because she views the tube skirt commonly worn throughout Cambodia as a material symbol belonging to Cambodian women.

Kanha (left of centre, wearing a scarf) and the participants holding the sewn together sarongs during the ‘One Hundrend Hands’ workshop. Image courtesy of Open Studio Cambodia.

As the youngest on the day of the workshop, it was challenging for Kanha to communicate about the project with the older women who joined. She says, “It was a little bit difficult to work with the older women because they did not understand my concept, but I tried my best.”

Rather than lead the group to follow her directions, Kanha acted as a facilitator to allow the women from her village to take ownership in the creative process. Using the proverb as a conversational starting point, the participants decided to sew the sarongs together.

Kanha notes, “After I explained why I brought them together to exchange the old sarongs for new ones, it was the workshop participants who decided to sew the sarongs together. I went into the workshop with a plan but when I got there, my neighbours, the older women in my village, had their own ideas. I told them they can follow their heart, their own way, and do what they want to do.”

While sewing the sarongs together, the group of multigenerational women discussed their lives and offered words of support to the emerging artist. “They gave me a lot of advice and shared the challenges they faced and encouraged me to continue making art even though it was difficult to communicate sometimes,” says Kanha. “I became inspired by their stories.”

After the workshop, Kanha, her mother, aunt and one other workshop attendee, took the sewn together sarongs to a nearby rice field to create the visual art component of the ‘One Hundred Hands’ series.

With support from Kanha’s photography assistant Chanreaksmey Mum, they captured the sentiment of the workshop in images. Kanha explains, “The main idea of the project was to get the women in my village to believe in their strength, give them space to share their stories and be creative.” She adds, “I know that I am an artist, but I wanted them to join me to create something together.

Bringing the women of Kanha’s community together for a shared experience during the workshop, they decided to sew together their old sarongs. Image courtesy of Open Studio Cambodia.

The ‘One Hundred Hands’ series features 22 mixed-media photographs. After printing the selected unedited photos, Kanha used a combination of painting, cutting, and collaging to create the images of women outlined in gold in the rice field. When asked why she decided to use the rice field as the setting, she spoke about how she wanted to represent women’s value to society as equal to the value of rice.

Rice is not only the staple food of Cambodian cuisine but is an integral part of how people relate to each other. A common greeting when meeting someone is Nhum Bai, translating literally to mean eat rice, and practically as ‘did you eat yet’. It functions as a sign of care, interest, and hello.

Kanha Hul, ‘Stabilize’, 2021, photo, acrylic 60cm x 40cm. ‘Stabilise’ features the artist’s mum as the subject and uses old sarongs, rice field, and a gold halo to illustrate the powerful place of women in Cambodian society. Image courtesy of Open Studio Cambodia.

Speaking on this similarity between rice and women, Kanha says, “Cambodian women are the life source of their communities and must survive hardships to provide for their families like the rice plant. The most important part of this work for the audience is to recognise the value of women and their work.”

In creating contemporary visual art premised on traditional proverbs, Kanha’s practice permeates the barriers between fine art and life; old and new generations; isolation and community; significations past and present.

Like many artists across the world, the only thing slowing her down is the global pandemic. However, when asked what is next, she says she will be releasing a new series departing from mixed-media photography to work with block printing hopefully later this year on the impact of the pandemic on food scarcity in Cambodia.