Exhibition Tour – Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia

Join Suyog Prajapati, Ph.D. candidate in the U-M History of Art Department, for a tour and discussion of Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia. As crises of public health, racial injustice, economic instability, and climate change spread worldwide, millions are experiencing distress, conflict, indebtedness, and vulnerability. This mélange of unnerving emotions is hardly new for Cambodians. Between 1975-1979, when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, about a quarter of the country’s population died of infectious diseases, weapon wounds, and malnutrition. Bringing together more than eighty artworks spanning a millennium –– including many on loan from collections worldwide –– this landmark exhibition presents the visual culture of Cambodia and its diaspora and allows viewers to encounter the still-fresh scars of a genocide and of related upheavals and critically appreciate strategies evolved to nurture resilience.