Elements presents a new collaborative work by artist sisters Mech Choulay and Mech Sereyrath. The
two artists use performance and personal actions in the form of photographs and videos to shed
light on the resilience of nature against destruction caused by humans.
Choulay and Sereyrath have traveled several times to Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey province, to
learn the history of the region and the forest preservation work by the communities there. Located
in the northern part of Cambodia, Anlong Veng is the last territory occupied by the Khmer Rouge.
This region is filled with dense jungle and Dângrêk Mountains lying along the Cambodian-Thai
border.
The artists have spent time at the Monk's Community Forest, which is known as the last forest in
Oddar Meanchey province and is managed by Buddhist monks and villagers in Anlong Veng. They
have met and joined with many monks patrolling the forest, and have stayed there to make works.
This forest has been relentlessly intruded by deforestation and wildlife hunting.
Learning from the religious practice in forest preservation, the artists made interventions by
wrapping or painting on the trees like the tree ordination done by the community. In this case,
however, the artistic "ordination" done by the artists is instead an observation, learning, and
relationship building between the artists and the forest. We can imagine the artist using brush
enduringly painting the trees inch by inch, one at a time.
In this exhibition, a series of six photographs show renewed trees in painted colors or golden wrap.
In one picture, however, we see a scarecrow draped in monk's robe standing by the forest, whereas
in another photograph, a dead tree left erected in half after being burned. In fact, the artists threw
ashes onto it, creating a mysterious, foggy effect as if demanding curiosity from the viewers. In a
single-channel video, a peculiar creature in bright colors flies or crawls up and down, changing its
form every second. It mutates, disappears, and reappears in unpredictable ways.
Moreover, Choulay and Sereyrath have traveled to the Mekong River to research about water and
its cycle. There are big eleven hydropower dam development projects along the Mekong River which
runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Studies have warned that
this kind of development is extremely harmful to the environment and the communities along the
Mekong, while this essential river already deteriorates from sand dredging, over-fishing, and
degradation of river life.
Also presented here in this exhibition, another single-channel video and four photographs feature a
performance done by the artists. In this work, a strange, unidentified figure — covered their face
and body with a very long red robe — wanders, twists, and floats on the river. Sometimes they
appear grieving, other times eerie, not so different from the river which suffers by human activities
while it could also cause seasonal destruction. This figure digs and eats sand until pregnant, and
there was born a big clump of baby sand. The common Khmer term for baby delivery Chhlorng Tonle
— which means "cross the river" — mirrors the figure's wandering across the water.

In Elements, Mech Choulay and Mech Sereyrath employ performance and individual actions to make
us see more clearly the beauty and the resilience of nature. The artists reimagine a new existence of
natural life by transforming them into new forms (ordinated trees, animal-hand, and river creature).
Either forest or water, the artists immerse themselves into them, as if turning themselves into them,
and through artistic interventions, they call for protection and healing for our endangered ecology.
About artists.