KONG Dara

The new work of Kong Dara is based on his personal experience of self-discovery. With archival ink on tracing paper, Dara’s gentle yet charged drawings map an unconventional cartography of desire, narrating a journey of emotional and sexual burden and emancipation.

 

According to the artist, ink is a medium for tracing memory; he thinks nostalgically of intimate feelings penned in letters to loved ones. The series Journey Line re ects on his personal experiences and observations within the increasingly visible gay and queer communities in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam - where he has been an artist-in-residence for most of the past year. His drawings destabilize norms of standardized maps with counter-grown, sprouting, organic encounters.

 

In a separate series Sareirak (organism), Dara interprets his direct observations of behavior and affection among straight and gay passengers on public transportation in Bangkok. In contrast to the bird’s eye view in Journey Line, Sareirak presents small, delicate, specimen-like gures, inviting the audience into a private, microscopic vision of public intimacy.