Center for Khmer Studies Public Lecture Series
Lecture on Friday 3rd of August 2012: 5.30-7.30 PM Venue: CKS Office in Phnom Penh, no 234, st. 450,Sangkat Tuol Tumpoung 2.
KHMER ARTS AND HANDICRAFTS IN FRENCH COLONIAL POLICY
Dr. Caroline Herbelin Toulouse 2-Le Mirail University
Brief Biography: Dr. Caroline Herbelin is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Toulouse, France, with a research focus on material culture and cross-cultural studies and teaching Modern Asian History, the History of Colonial Societies in Asia, and the history of Vietnamese and Chinese Art. She completed her Ph.D at the University of Paris IV, Sorbonne on the history of architecture and urban planning in Vietnam. She is currently writing a book that explores cultural interactions and mechanisms of hybridity through the manifestation of architecture in colonial and postcolonial contexts. This summer, CKS is supporting her to begin a project examining notions of “art” and “handicraft” and how they have been shaped by colonial and postcolonial situations in Southeast Asia.
Abstract: This presentation is part of a larger project that critically examines the use of categories of arts and handicrafts in Cambodia across the 20th century. For this talk she will focus more precisely on the colonial period. At that time, arts and handicrafts had been the object of a particularly strong policy led by Georges Groslier aimed at the “revival” of Khmer arts considered as “decadent”. Also, she proposes to analyze how the concepts of “handicrafts” and “tradition” were tightly controlled and shaped, for example in the education program of the Ecole des Arts Cambodgiens or in the display of different exhibitions both in the colony and in the metropole. She is particularly interested in the artifacts that this policy put aside and criticized because they were considered as not “authentic”. Even if the colonial elite considered them as the expression of “bad taste”, they actually reveals that there were craftsmen working outside of the official path, proposing an inventive and original type of art.
The Public Lecture Series, which is open to the general public, is an outgrowth of the successful academic lecture and seminar programs in Phnom Penh. The aim is to draw together Cambodian and international scholars, business people and artists to discuss topics in the field of Cambodian and Southeast Asian studies, across all disciplines in the social sciences, arts and humanities on a monthly basis. The lectures and seminars provide an excellent opportunity for junior and senior Cambodian scholars to interact with others around topics of common interest. The intention is to extend participation beyond CKS research Fellows to all those interested, including local universities and CKS alumni. Lectures and seminars will be held at both CKS sites, in the capital Phnom Penh and at our headquarters in Siem Reap.
