KHIEV Kanel, KHUN Vannak, SOVAN Philong

"Metis : Exploring Humanity's Ties to the Ocean"

Institut Français du Cambodge — gallery

19 November –19 December 2025

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In 2025, Cambodia was selected, along with Turkey, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Martinique,

Mexico, Costa Rica, Congo-Brazzaville, Ecuador, the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Polynesia), São

Tomé and Príncipe, Indonesia, Senegal, Cape Verde, Morocco, and Mauritania, to carry out

a project presented at the Third United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025.

This initiative of the Metis Fund, created by the French Development Agency (AFD), aims to

integrate arts and culture into development projects and this year focused on issues related

to the oceans.

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The proposal jointly developed by Khiev Kanel, a video artist who has continued his work on

and with surveillance cameras, Khun Vannak, a performer, and Sovan Philong, a

photographer, was selected. They chose to work with the community of a small fishing

village near the Thai border. As one of the artists explains: “It’s like an adventure, a journey

across the ocean to a crossroads where a community of people lives and works, known as

the Avlatan Bridge or Avlatan Village. Apart from travelling by boat, the only means of

transport, the inhabitants can communicate with one another thanks to a wooden bridge one

kilometre long, which is the only route allowing them to move from house to house, or from

home to the school or the village pagoda.”

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In keeping with the objectives of Metis, the artists worked in dialogue with the local

population, immersed themselves in the community, set up workshops with children, created

their own artworks, and presented them locally during three stays of at least one week each,

knowing that every trip to and from the village requires a full day of travel.

This exhibition reflects the entire experience, presenting the works created by the three

artists — a video installation, a filmed account of the performance, an exhibition of

photographs — as well as a documentary video about the project and works produced

during the workshops conducted with the villagers.

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Whatever the artistic forms or techniques used, the whole project highlights the inhabitants’

relationship with the ocean, their only horizon and sole source of livelihood. Something that

must be preserved at all costs.

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Bio

Sovan Philong was born in 1986 in Kandal province into a modest family. He moved to

Phnom Penh to continue his studies. In 2005, he obtained a degree in information

technology from the National University of Management (NUM).

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From 2004 to 2008, he worked as an editor in the video department of Catholic Social

Communication (CSC). It was there that he discovered photography, initially tasked with

producing images for the organization's publications. Intrigued by this medium, he quickly

developed a keen interest and sought out the teaching of Mak Remissa, a renowned

Cambodian photographer.

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In 2008, after documenting the first edition of the Photo Phnom Penh festival, he trained at

Studio Images, a photography and media program created by the current French Institute in

Cambodia. He then began his career as a photojournalist, joining the Phnom Penh Post in

2011 and the Xinhua news agency in 2012.

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His commitment to photography earned him a one-year scholarship from the French

Embassy in Cambodia to study at the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière in France

from 2012 to 2013.

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Since 2010, Sovan Philong has also been a teacher and mediator. He is currently president

of the Phnom Penh Photo Association and director of the Studio Images / House of

Photography school.