Sopheap Pich

Sopheap Pich moved with his family to the United States in 1984, graduating with an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and a BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1995. In 2002, he returned to Cambodia where he began working with local materials – bamboo, rattan, burlap, beeswax and earth pigments – to create sculptures inspired by bodily organs, vegetal forms, and abstract geometric structures. His childhood during the turbulent years of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the late 1970s has had a strong influence on his work, specifically in the way that he engages with time, memory, and the body. The first Southeast Asian artist to have presented a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Pich is acclaimed for his sculptures and grid-based wall relief works. His works are included in numerous institutional collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; M+, Hong Kong; Singapore Art Museum; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. He lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.