SO Sothsovankong / KWN23

(b. 1998, Banteay Meanchey Province, Cambodia)
So Sothsovankong is a self-taught graffiti artist. His practices include graffiti, film and painting. His painting style moves toward calligraphy which inspired from Sankrit and modern graffiti writing. He touches on personal issues and learning process through his techniques. In 2017 he worked as an assistant and graffiti artist for PAINT PHNOM PENH Project at The Factory Phnom Penh. In the same year he played the lead character of Sok Chan Rado’s “White Wall,” a short film-selected for screening at the Chaktomuk Film Festival 2017. In 2018 he was selected by Java Creative Café as Creative Generation 2018 and exhibited “Light at the End of the Tunnel”. His work has also been exhibited internationally in Tokyo as part of the group exhibition “Being No-one, Going Nowhere”. His exhibition called “I know we will talk about it again” were exhibited at Bong the gallery in 2019. 


Inspiration
In 2020 when the world was in crisis with COVID 90, everything had changed. As a young and independent artist, I had been in distressed of the issue. Many plans, projects, and my paid job had been subsequently suspended at the same time. On the bright side, it gave me time to learn about myself, to read, to cook, and to experience the feeling of loneliness.
Day by day the situation didn’t seem to get any better. The money I had start running low while I had many things to take care of.
I was desperate and my mental health start to breakdown. The last choice for me was to pack all my painting and painting supply and move. Then I decided to move back to my hometown.
I didn’t do anything much out there beside walking to a hill which was close to my village and climb to its top. In most late evenings, I sat on the grass, the sun was coming down projecting me with the view of the village like it was burning. Exposing the golden sky, the texture of the cloud was getting darker and darker with a few small houses of the villagers starting to turn their lights on. The beautiful moon started to show up after the sun was gone.