Curatorial Practice

My “origins story” in curation starts here: with an exposure to curatorial practice and theory through seminars on the ethnography of creative practices and the politics of curation at the Branly Museum in Paris on the one hand, and by learning from my colleagues at the Reyum Research Institute & Gallery in Phnom Penh, where I was trained to think research and art as one process, on the other hand. In 2007 I improvised an exhibition of scattered family archives from the pre-war(s) 60’s, on the walls of the O’Russei Village Mosque in Cambodia. In 2010 I was invited by the East West Center, at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, as a co-curator for the Cambodian section of a Cham contemporary culture exhibition. 

In terms of film curation, my long interest in film practice, theory, and reach crystallized in June 2022 when Nat Nesvaderani and I co-curated The Virtual Otherwise film festival. In this resolutely collaborative project, our orientations towards feminist and experimental cinema generated a re-envisioning of what ethnographic film festivals could be.

The Virtual Otherwise Film Festival | 2022

East West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu | 2010
Chams: Syncretic Islamic Communities in Vietnam & Cambodia

O’Russei Village Mosque, Kompong Chhnang Province, Cambodia | 2007
O'Russei Visual Archive

Photo Credit | Meng Sar Phyrun