Socheata Aing

Socheata Aing is an artist who mainly uses performance in her artistic work to express herself in a ritualistic manner. She also incorporates texts and objects she has created herself, seeking to enable everyone to identify with their own universe through her works. These explore emotional memories and the acceptance of our fears and anxieties.

Jardin Secret [Secret Garden]

Her exhibition project Jardin Secret examines various themes related to memories, intimate space and family heritage. She draws on modest, sometimes childish references such as birthdays, favourite colours, the pronunciation of a first name... familiar references that allow her to question family trajectories, particularly those resulting from immigration.

Les petites mémoires (Little Memories) is the initial text on which Socheata Aing bases her work, centred on the notion of anecdote (Claire de Ribaupierre, 2007). These texts are a collection of images, gestures and sensations. Her project is characterised by a desire to perform memorial rituals, gently linking the dead and the living. Socheata Aing also presents a film based on family archives entitled La Double absence. Among these additional creations is Panser les images, a series of models representing temples, made from cardboard packaging of exotic decorative objects. La Table de montage is a piece that addresses the complexity of working with archives, a piece that seeks to write a narrative that is always in motion, without betraying the images.

The aim of the exhibition is to present projects that are constructed independently but are linked to each other, in order to offer the public an intimate universe.

Before participating in the Mezzanine Sud exhibition at Les Abattoirs, the artist enriched her career by taking part in several notable group exhibitions in 2024, such as Merle Blanc at Galerie 3.1 in Toulouse, Une affaire de famille at La Passerelle, Centre d'art Contemporain in Brest, and Jardin Partagé at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris during a residency.

She has also given some memorable performances, notably at the Museum of Photography in Antwerp with S’occuper de ses oignons at the exhibition Her Voice, echoes of Chantal Akerman, and Faire un éclat, which was presented in September 2023 for the 50th anniversary of the Capc in Bordeaux, at the invitation of Föhn.