Visual Arts Library
Along the Road Home From the Hospital (History of My Family Series, No. 5)
Artist: Svay Ken
Date:
1975
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 x 80 cm
Event: Cambodian Killing Fields
Motif:
Families
Events
History of My Family Series Svay Ken's works comprise a series of 14 paintings depicting the experiences of his family during Pol Pot times in various scenes and episodes. Initially, the family is seen fleeing Phnom Penh while Lon Nol's (a Cambodian general with Western allegiances) soldiers are led away to their deaths, and another picture depicts a political meeting. A later picture from the series shows the planes of the Vietnamese soldiers invading in 1979, while peasants run confused below in the rice fields. Yet another scene illustrates the capture of Svay Ken and two of his children by a retreating Khmer Rouge leader. Begging for their lives for two hours, the three were finally released and returned safely to Phnom Penh. The series ends with a picture of the whole family under a big tree, having made it through with nothing but their lives. In all, the series presents a deceptively matter-of-fact vision of the travails of regular citizens under Pol Pot. Most of the figures are painted facing the viewer, or painter, as if posing for a snapshot of their trauma. It is as if they are players in a tragic drama, fully cognizant of the fate that awaits them, yet powerless to change history. No blood or dead bodies are shown (except for in the two Hospital panels), and the series emphasizes "what happened to me" in all its banal detail. The straightforward rendering of events in the painter's characteristic hand gives the viewer a continuity of lived time rather than confronting him/her with a single traumatic scene. Along the Road Home From the Hospital Released from the hospital, Svay Ken was so weak that on the way home he had to sit down many times. His younger sister came to meet him and gave him the little rice she had to eat.
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