Abstract
Abstract Informed by interviews, studio visits, exhibition openings, and on-site observation of a changing landscape, this essay argues that recent artworks by Sopheap Pich and several other Cambodian and Vietnamese artists prompt us to think of the materiality of plants, their taxidermy, and the possibility of laboriously creating plant–human amalgams without completely anthropomorphizing nature or partaking in the anthropomorphic transforming into the arboreal. This article also maintains that these contemporary Southeast Asian artists are willfully relinquishing some control over their artworks and letting form-making and meaning-making activities that also occur outside the human realm to transpire. By doing so, they are investigating, representing, and addressing grave social and environmental problems that the region has been experiencing since the 1970s.
Published Version
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