Chath Piersath Quotes
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It's like you're organically developing yourself, moving out, metamorphosing into other forms depending on where you are, what you're doing at the time, how you want to play on things.
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In This Body Mystery, even though it was written in the voice of people with HIV/AIDS, it's about how people come to accept their fate and their sickness. It's about accepting the way your life is.
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You get closer to your own humanity by understanding the stories of other people and the struggles they have.
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Mary's [Hamill] working from an outsider perspective and I'm working from an insider-outside perspective. In this case, it will bring an added dimension to the visual aspects of the work. Also the processes and approaches that I'm thinking are about learning. I'm playing it by ear to experiment and see what happens.
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I think there are things I can't write in English that I wish I could write in Khmer.
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I'm very connected to the story, the history, and the trauma people experience.
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I think that through the narratives of other people you get closer to your own.
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In Cambodian culture the male figure in the family is important; when you lose your husband you lose your economic ability to survive.
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I think every writer has their waves of inspiration and their ways of doing things. But writing is very difficult for me. It's something I haven't practiced as diligently as my visual art. I've been doing visual art because I think it's easier for me to construct, whereas words are very difficult.
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Often when people tell their story, they talk about their strengths and resiliency. It's really about their determination and their aspiration to survive and live.
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I'm also developing my own narrative, because I'm the son of a widow. And so, while working with women and gathering their oral histories, I'm taking a step back to do my own art book and visual work.
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I have some advantages of viewing from the two lenses, the two perspectives. I think that a lot of visual artists who come back here from the United States and are Cambodian also write from their American references - looking inside the old culture, and looking at themselves as an American looking into the country where they were born.
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I thought of the pillowcases as a symbol of love and loss, of retaining the memory of your loved one.
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I tried to write poems in rhyme. I tried writing songs. Sometimes I jotted down a thought. I would keep a log of spontaneous thoughts.
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Even if you look in the dictionary you know the meaning of the word or phrase, but there's still the feeling of it.
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I started to paint in the year 2000. I never thought of going to an art school, even though I loved art.
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I think that there are certain feelings and things you can convey in a simple form that people can see and understand.
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When you make art, those things change shape into something else. It's transformation into a body of different visual elements.
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When you're reading from a different language that's different from your own, it's not the same as being fluent.
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I'm doing a collaborative project with another artist, Mary Hamill. My project is to gather the oral history of war widows, starting with the women of my village, Kop Nymit.
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I am a community social psychologist and a lot of my work deals with social work and helping people overcoming addiction and trauma.
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Sometimes I fantasize about learning to write in Khmer. Because if I could write in Khmer, my perspective would be very different, because I'm both an outsider and insider and I see the writing in a different way. My description would be different from, say, a local writer.
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There are multiple things entering in your mind.
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I have a great advantage: I write from the perspective of my own voice. I'm not copying anyone's voice. It's my voice. I have the advantage of being a writer of English as a second language.
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All throughout my work, even in the United States, I have worked with the greater Cambodian community.
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How am I placing myself in the world of other people around me? For me, I feel that I am not really alone, that others can feel it too. I see art in this way.
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Whether I affect one person or an entire family, or even a group of people, I feel like I have resources and education and ability and skills that some people may not be fortunate enough to acquire. But by sharing and inquiring, being a listener, and being interested in the stories of other people and their lives, I can also pull things out and say "What can I do for them? What can I share with them that may alleviate some of their suffering?"
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You have to experiment with different mediums and things around you [making art].
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I met Mary [Hamill] in New York at my exhibition and when I told her about my oral history project she asked, "Would it be possible to incorporate visual art?" My sister stitches pillowcases, which led to Mary suggesting using cyanotype on them. I originally thought of the idea of pillowcases because when people get married, they have the bride and the groom lay their hands on each other's pillows while their relatives tie ribbons on their wrists. And then on the bed you usually have two pillows - one for yourself and one for your loved one - so when one is gone, one pillow remains.
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Even though I'm not privileged in the money world, I'm privileged in other ways: I had greater access to education, I can travel, etc. It's the same with writing: the freedom to move in and out of different places, of different realms of existence, of different life forms.
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