KIM-LENG UNG

Ung Kim-Leng is a Cambodian painter of Chinese origin born in 1958 in Phnom Penh.

Born into a family that fled the Sino-Japanese war, Kim-Leng Ung was in turn forced to flee Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge came to power.

His painting bears witness to the trauma and violence linked to exile and war, in particular the Cambodian genocide. Arriving in France at the age of 17, he entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris and began a career as a painter. After years of work during which he exhibited in France, Spain, Japan and Taiwan, he gradually managed to express, through his works, the suffering and heartbreak of his history, the destitution, the emptiness, the absence.

Thus, a large part of his work questions the human consequences of conflicts. The loss of a loved one, the desperate search for traces of the past, of disappeared faces, of buried memories. And through this search, always, hope. That of a suspended moment, the secret instant, the night, the intimate, the couple.