Faraway So Close: Building intercultural connections with Cambodia’s contemporary arts | By James Compton
Installation view, Follow You Home: Women Artists from Cambodia and Cambodian-Australian Diaspora, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, 2026. Photo: Richard Glover.
Faraway So Close: Building intercultural connections with Cambodia’s contemporary arts
We’re pleased to share a new review of Follow You Home: Women Artists from Cambodia and Cambodian-Australian Diaspora, published in Artlink by writer and arts journalist James Compton.
The review places the exhibition within a broader context of Cambodia’s contemporary arts landscape, drawing connections between the country’s complex histories, its evolving cultural scene and the experiences of artists working across Cambodia and the diaspora.
The exhibition brings together four artists, Mao Sovanchandy, Nataly Lee, Linda Sok and Allison Chhorn, whose practices explore questions of place, belonging, memory and cultural identity. Across photography, painting, fibre, sculpture, installation and moving image, the artists consider how personal and collective histories can be carried across geographical and generational distances.
Compton reflects on the significance of diasporic experience, noting how cultural dislocation can create a space between tradition and emerging identities. For the artists in Follow You Home, this space becomes an opportunity to explore new creative lineages while reconnecting with histories, places and stories that have shaped their sense of home.
The review also connects the exhibition to 16albermarle Project Space’s ongoing engagement with Cambodian contemporary art. Follow You Home builds on the 2023 exhibition All That Surrounds Us, which introduced audiences in Sydney to a group of contemporary Cambodian artists, and continues curator Lauren Elise Barlow’s broader exploration of Cambodian visual art and diaspora.
Featuring works by artists based in both Cambodia and Australia, Follow You Home creates a dialogue across borders and generations. From Mao Sovanchandy’s photographic observations of Phnom Penh’s changing urban landscape to Nataly Lee’s hybrid landscapes, Linda Sok’s material explorations of fragmented memory and Allison Chhorn’s cinematic reflections on family and home, the exhibition considers the many ways belonging can be constructed, remembered and reimagined.
As Compton writes, Follow You Home “bridges vast intercultural distances” while highlighting the value of collaboration in bringing Cambodian visual arts perspectives into wider contemporary conversations.
Follow You Home: Women Artists from Cambodia and Cambodian-Australian Diaspora was curated by Lauren Elise Barlow and presented at Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Sydney, from 4–26 September 2026.
