THINK OF ALL THE VOICES THAT WANT TO STOP YOU AS THE RHYTHM TO YOUR MUSIC
– N O R E A នរាហ៏
FROM BURIED TO LIVING ARCHIVES —Exhibited online in Digital Immaterialities gallery Fictional Best Of vinyls of music legends from the Golden Age era of Cambodia. A pilot project of archives re-enactment to counter erasure (2021-present).
OUR FOOD OUR RESISTANCE – NOM PAO នុំប៉ាវ is the first of this series, based on an experimental method of oral history revival with my mother. An exploration of cuisine, transculturation and the process of following what we don’t see nor know yet (2022).
FREE THE COLOURS OF YOUR BEAST — An invitation to refuse assimilation at its roots. In reaction to the Atlanta shooting ingrained in a history of yellow fever x feminicide x whorephobia. Inspired by Rocky Rivera’s Wake Up song & James Balwin: “We just have to not be so self-destructive about it, organize, you know?”

♡ Full portfolio ♡

About Me
ប្រវត្តិរូប

The Illustrator as Public Intellectual

Rather than merely reflecting the times, ‘In an atomic era, the illustrator should be a reactor’. A nuclear reactor is not a settling prospect but the public intellectual illustrator, as a catalyst, stimulating energy and change. The role is ours by inheritance and duty.
– Jaleen Grove
Photographer Eloïse Turgeon
Studio Greenhouse
Makeup artist Celica Sea

As an illustrator and scholar, I use illustration in research-creation to seize its agency when language has been lost and history has been rewritten. My work is at the intersection of race, visual culture and critical archival studies, with a specific interest in social movements.

As a Cambodian born in Montreal in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide, I find healing in focusing my illustration work and research publications on retrieving Khmer memory by re-narrating the lost and distorted archives. Drawn by the challenge of illuminating hope, I aim to turn assimilation strategies into tactics to subvert power and restore agency to the people.

My research explores illustration as radical hope in the face of erasure. At the core of my lifelong work is a reconnection to Khmer oral history and people.

In illustration, I specialize in visual communication, scientific comics, editorial, books, and murals. I hope to add moving images for music videos and films.

I am currently working on my first graphic novel, about the undocumented story of Cambodians in Quebec. I speak Khmer, French, and English.

ILLUSTRATOR AS PROVOCATEUR

THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE IS TO CREATE A PLATFORM TO CHANGE THEIR FRAMES OF REFERENCE BY CRITICALLY REFLECTING ON THEIR ASSUMPTIONS AND BELIEFS. TO CONSCIOUSLY CHALLENGE AND CREATE NEW WAYS OF DEFINING EVERYTHING THAT CONTROLS OR INFLUENCES THEIR WORLD. THIS IS THE PRECEPT THAT DEFINES PROVOCATION.
-ALAN MALE

I show love through fighting for an anti-oppressive world, which is why my work often returns to disrupting the instrumentalization of immigrant bodies for complicit Indigenous colonialism and the erasure of those who suffer loudly and in silence. I particularly like eating prahok kits ប្រហុកខ្ទិះ, building Legos, discovering small local grocery shops, and giving my brain a break with long naps, Asian cinema, graphic novels, and petting cats. Laughing is my favourite hobby of all time and libraries are where I find solace.

My process of exploring visual X oral history

Throughout my journey of healing from dispossession and erasure, I have conducted research that has allowed me to find new paths to access my culture, whose legacy is scattered around the globe. I have discovered the broad visual culture that remains a language for Khmer oral history.

My parents are sewers, and I grew up staring at their hands while they made and repaired clothes. Hands are a recurring symbol in our arts and culture. Classical dance uses hand gestures to express emotions and stories of the land and water that are the foundations of Khmer indigeneity in Southeast Asia.

Therefore, in my illustrations, I think about how hands tell about someone’s life and generational legacy.

The depiction of hands provides me with avenues to explore the frictions in the stories we tell ourselves, looking for different truths in conjunction with class, race and assimilation, but also community, moving identities and the search for a sense of belonging. Thus tying together the complex relationship between the hands of forever foreigners, settlers of colour and Indigenous communities in Canada.

My Yey’s neighbour opening a fruit I did not know so I can taste it. Battambang, Cambodia, 2009.
Yey’s hands on her sarong. Phnom Penh, 2009.
Yey and her sister cooking fish for my cousins and I, at her house in Phnom Sampeuv, Battambang, 2008.

CV

Education

September 2020 – December 2024 | Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Master’s in Media Studies, Communication – Research-Creation

  • Thesis: Illustration to translate the Oral History of Cambodians in Quebec, From Reminiscing to Archiving Hope, Amid Erasure
  • Project: developing a methodology of visual culture, specific to representations and visual narrative, based on techniques of oral history revival, archives reenactment and the re-narration of family stories. The prototype of illustrations will serve as a guideline for a graphic novel about the undocumented story of Khmer people in Quebec.
  • Core concepts: erasure, memoricide, Baksbat, silence, post-memory, agency, radical hope
  • Related Topics: rebirth, oral history, collective amnesia, art as a language, visual culture, reclaiming identity, counter-narrative, archives.
  • Fields involved: critical archival studies, cultural studies and transcultural psychology gravitating around Khmer studies and decolonization methodology.

🏆 2022 Funding, Conseil des arts de Montréal

🏆 2020 Steven Goldberg Entry Bursary, Concordia University

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July 2018 | Centre de formation DAWAN, Bordeaux, France

Advanced Certificate in Graphic Design (OPFQ Certification)

  • Adobe Illustrator

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January 2010 – December 2013 | Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada

Bachelor’s Degree in Geography – Major in Territorial Analysis and Planning Research

  • Internship 1.5 year: Methodology of research in geography, UQAM & University of West Timisoara (Romania)
  • Memoir: Tourism and Natural Hazards in the Carpathian Mountains

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September 2005 – May 2007 | Cégep de Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Canada

Diploma of Collegial Studies in Fine Arts

  • Specialization: mixed techniques of clay, fabric and photographs
  • Project: My family’s archives and oral history
  • Organized a collective exhibition with 30 artists and 100 art pieces

🏆 2008 Laureate for Excellence in Community Engagement

🏆 2007 Finalist in the Quebec Inter-College Fine Arts Competition

🏆 2007 Tolerance Bursary for Exhibition Against Racism

🏆 2006-07 Distinction Among 3 Private Collectors (Paintings)

Professional Experiences

2017 – Present | Illustrator (Independent)

♡ Visual storytelling: on memory in the face of erasure

♡ Representation & visual narrative: race and gender focus

♡ Visual communication to propel collective waves of change: anti-oppression focus

BOOKS

AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS

  • #MakeChildhoodAPriority #PrioritePetiteEnfance for Early Childhood Week, by Collectif petite enfance, 2021
  • #OnVousCroit, Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, 2020
  • #AsiansAreNotTheVirus #LesAsiatiquesNeSontPasLeVirus, Provocateur Pencils, 2020
  • #Commetoi, Table de quartier Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, 2020

RESEARCH ASSISTANT – April 2022 – Present | Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University

  • Head Researcher: Gada Marhouse
  • Project on revisiting race lexicon: Quebec Black, Indigenous and Women of Colour Activism in 2022: From A to Z
  • Website prototype for future book
  • Co-author: review of critical literature, experimenting a methodology based on oral history interview methods, drawing visual mindmap, writing, meetings

CO-COORDINATOR & ART DIRECTOR – 2016 – 2021 | Independent Cyclo-Feminist Publishing, Les dérailleuses

  • Planning projects for gender equity in the cycling world: talk, publications, interviews
  • Representative in Europe & management of distribution
  • Art direction, visual ocmmunication (flyer, layout, packages) & the Londonderry book
    • 🏆 2016 Londonderry won the prize for Best Zine EXPOZINE MTL
Publications

BOOKS

  • Comme toi j’ai une histoire as Illustrator, Femmes-relais et 200 portes HM, 2020 
  • Agenda des femmes 2020, Éditions du Remue-ménage, 2019 
Exhibitions

2023 Mémoire de l’avenir

Ces mémoires qui nous bercent, by Art Urbain Mtl & Art souterrain Montreal, curated by Camille Larivée

2022 From Buried to Living Archives

  • Shifting Articulations of Asian-ness in Contemporary Canada by Intersections in Art, Curated by Yang Lim
  • Digital Immaterialities Conference Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal
Talk

Illustration: Representation, Archives & Transformative Justice

Picture from my talk ‘The Power of Representation’, hosted by Illustration Quebec 2019
Community Building

Ratanak Cambodian Community Farm | 2021 – 2022

  • Agriculture (Asian vegetables), collective cooking and cleaning
  • Bridging 1st and 2nd generation Cambodian-Canadians

Coaching & Mentorship of BIPOC Creatives | 2020 – Present

  • Debunking Imposter Syndrome x Model Minority Myth x Immigration Lineage
  • Yellow Peril Representation Traps in Visuals
  • Media-Making is Archive-Making
  • Resisting Assimilation to Whiteness in the Workplace: Learning Vocabulary & Stereotype Traps
  • Communication with Collaborators and Clients: Setting Boundaries & Navigating Conflicts
  • Price Negotiations
  • Canadian Copyright Law
  • Transitioning Into A Freelance Profession: Where To Start?

Research-Creation Project
ការស្រាវជ្រាវ និងការបង្កើត

TELLING STORIES MAKES US REMEMBER THAT HOPE DOES NOT NEED TO BE VISIBLE TO EXIST.
-RAVY

SPEAKING THROUGH LEGACY

A pilot project about my family archives and oral history revival (2021).

“There is so much knowledge that you still don’t know, who will inherit it if you still remain in ignorance? It’s time to rise.”
–MASTER KONG NAY & Vannda វណ្ណដា

Research-creation project partly funded by the Conseil des arts de Montréal

Features
ព័ត៌មាន

Interview

Full interview with Canadian Women in Design, April 2022

Press

Community Building
ការកសាងសហគមន៍

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

Coaching entrepreneurship x BIPOC creatives 2020-23

Coaching on topics: Canadian copyright law, price negotiation, analyzing a contract, making quotes. Through educational visuals, accompaniment on the phone and individual workshop in-person (2020-present).

#AsiansAreNotTheVirus Campaign Provocateur Pencils 2020

Over 50 visual artists rallied in the midst of the anti-Asian racism in 2020.

Sketching cafe 2020

Co-organization with Navid Moghadam. Gatherings in cafés once a month to sketch and make creatives meet each other, Montreal (2020).

Behind the scenes
នៅ​ពី​ក្រោយ​ឆាក

I AM THANKFUL TO

My mama’s love & food, the cousis’support and loud hyena laughs.
Alone we succeed, but together we bloom.

♡♡ (=◐ᆽ◐=)ฅ ♡♡

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/ᐠ. ｡.ᐟ\ᵐᵉᵒʷˎˊ˗