Axe and Wood

Kim Hak was born in 1981, two years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. He grew up listening to his parent's memories of that time. Now he uses his art practice to raise awareness of his country's past - to remember, reclaim and reinterpret Cambodian social history from before, during and after the Khmer Rouge era.

"I started this long-term project "Alive" from my own family's memory. From there, I decided to expand this project to other families living inside Cambodia and then Cambodian diasporas who left their homeland to live at different parts of the world after the war by using photography to capture the memory of human history. Now it is a race against the clock because living witnesses are gradually disappearing.

40 years after the Khmer Rouge war, the old people began to die. If all these living witnesses of the war pass away, with their experiences undocumented, those memories will be lost. Without learning from the past, we will repeat old mistakes. This is important not just for Cambodians but for all of humanity.

Most of the objects featured in my photography have been used by families before the war, during the Khmer Rouge regime, at the border camps, and then travelled on a long journey with the victims and survivors to new lands and continued to be used as everyday items. Each photograph has a clue that leads to a true story behind each individual object. The objects have been reclaimed, digging them out of the dirty land after the Pol Pot period, or they have been kept throughout the families’ lives.

I have engaged with 4 Cambodian diaspora families living in Logan/Brisbane. I was still fascinated with the objects and photos which migrants brought along with them to Australia, especially from the border camps in the 70s and 80s.

It was my first time to extend this project outside of Cambodia.” (artist statement)

"Alive" Chapter II (2015) was supported by Arts Queensland. This is an ongoing project by the artist and other chapters currently include New Zealand and Japan.