Voyages Aboard Le Tableau

"Aboard Le Tableau"

Born just before the fall of Cambodia to Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, Nan spent his youth trying to survive the oppressive conditions imposed on his country. Around him and throughout the country, millions perished from starvation, disease, torture, and execution as Pot Pot sought to create an extreme totalitarian agrarian society. 

Nan building our new classroom in Pum Prey village.

Even so, as a young man, Nan snuck around the village under the cover of darkness to a known educated person’s house to study French by oil lamp in secret. He learned chemistry, a skill which is virtually unrecognized by the younger generation. When he was 19 he was sent to fight against the Khmer Rouge across the country from his home in Pum Prey village. As a soldier he faced starvation and inhumane conditions and recalls several times a company of 100 men going out to fight and he and only 5 others returning safely. 

"Step by Step the Water Fills the Bamboo Stalk" graphite, colored pencil, Sumi ink 7"x 5"

My new body of work is inspired by a 48 year old Khmer man who lives across the street from our school in a dusty village called Pum Prey in eastern Cambodia. He is my adopted uncle, Nan. 

"Single surviving photo of Nan as a Boy" graphite, colored pencil. 5" x 7"

Above all, the Khmer Rouge recognized what a threat educated people were to their totalitarian reign and systematically eradicated all known intellectuals, musicians, artists, college graduates, and religious figures. Later in the Khmer Rouge era, even being literate or lacking the telltale callused hands of a farmer was a death sentence.

Nan recalls the chemistry equations he learned in secret in the early 1980s.

"Night in the Garden" Sumi ink on paper 7" x 5"

"We Both Slept Late" cut paper, colored pencil 7" x 5"

"Les uns comprennent, les autres ne comprennent pas." ("Some understand, others do not.") granite, Sumi ink on paper. 7" x 5"

Our learning center and home is directly across the road from Nan’s simple corrugated metal house. His ten year old son, Ranue is one of our highest achieving students. A widower for the last ten years, and father of five children, Nan is a subsistence rice farmer who earns around $400 per year working odd construction jobs and harvesting his small fish pond. 

Nan reads from a French phrase book at home with his ten year old son, Ranue.

Nan and Vincent, his French teacher.

When the first French people in at least 45 years arrived in Pum Prey in early 2015, Nan was able to recall the entire alphabet and many words and phrases after not speaking or hearing the language in about 25 years. He was nostalgic and very inspired to begin studying French again. He expressed his dream to go to Paris one day and to send his young son to study there. 

"The Births of my Children and the Death of My Wife." Colored pencil on paper 7" x 5"

"Paris or Bust in the Year Two Thousand One Hundred." Colored pencil on paper 7" x 5"

Every night Nan and a small group of other men and women in their forties and fifties congregate around the white board, which we all refer to as “le tableau” in French, and study by the light of a single naked bulb. 

Nan and his son, Ranue, studying together at le tableau.

Together we discover the world. We teach and learn Khmer (Cambodian), French, and English. We speak about our histories, our cultures, science, art, poetry, war, love, all the time taking turns scribbling furiously and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard. We exhaust pens rapidly. 

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"Bongrien Means Teach" ink, colored pencil, cut paper, graphite on paper 7" x 5"

I draw inspiration from the collaborative lessons left behind on the whiteboard each night.

"I am the people from Mars" cut paper, Sumi ink 7" x 5"

"There is a Leaf on Top of the Hair of Uncle Taht" graphite, Sumi ink, colored pencil 7" x 5"

Late in the evening one night after a long session, Nan turned to us and said, “I just now went to Paris. You were still sitting here in Pum Prey village and you didn’t see that I was gone because I went and came back so quickly. 

I went to Paris by riding on le tableau. It’s much easier to fly by le tableau than to fly by plane because when you go by le tableau you don’t need money because you don’t have to buy gas. You only need a pen. You write the name of the place you want to go on the whiteboard, and you’re there.” 

To learn more about The Antipodes Collective and our learning center in Pum Prey village please visit www.theantipodescollective.org