Mao Sovanchandy, a multidisciplinary artist from Cambodia, and her collaborator Yuryphal Tum, spent two months at Rimbun Dahan in 2025, drawing inspiration from the regenerative nature of mulch, with experiments with water hyacinth pulp, plaster, photography, food and performance.
About the Artists
Mao Sovanchandy (b. 1998) is an independent multidisciplinary artist exploring mixed-media works that reflect environmental and social issues, as well as societal norms, drawing from self-reflection and personal experience. A self-taught artist with a B.A. in Architecture, Sovanchandy’s practice is deeply informed by the rapid transformation of Phnom Penh — a city where historical, cultural, and ecological values are constantly shifting. Her practice evolves installation, performance, moving image, and social engagement, often centered on the tension between what is visible and what is forgotten. https://www.instagram.com/sovanchandymao, https://shorturl.at/TUjNk
For her residency at Rimbun Dahan, Sovanchandy has invited Yuryphal Tum to be her collaborator.
Yuryphal Tum (b. 1992) is an independent artist and architect from Cambodia. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. As the daughter of a sculptor, Yuryphal was surrounded by art from an early age, which deeply influenced her creative journey. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, architecture, and archival work, often assembling meaning from small fragments and found materials. She values the hand-crafted process and the sculptural quality of her work, always striving to capture the beauty and integrity of handmade art. https://www.instagram.com/yury.tum, https://shorturl.at/l4o7r
Loam Collaboration is an artist-run collaborative space, residency, library, and kitchen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, planned to officially launch in 2026 after the residency concludes. In Khmer, “លោម” (Loam) signifies comfort and the protection of a guardian spirit. Loam serves as a safe space for Cambodian artists, as well as artists from other countries, to experiment, exchange, and learn. It supports not only artistic practice but also research into art and creative processes, offering a setting where ideas can be tested, questioned, and expanded. Through workshops, experimental art projects, film screenings, creative pop-ups, and residency exchange programs, Loam fosters cross-boundary connections by showcasing work, sharing ongoing projects and archives, and encouraging dialogue between artists and the communities they engage with. https://www.instagram.com/loam_collaboration
About the Residency
Chandy was accepted into a two-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2024, which coincidentally overlapped with her participation in the Maybank Fellowship Program 2025. She later invited her collaborator, Yury, to join her at the residency. Their time at Rimbun Dahan became a period of reflection on their recent developments and future direction toward establishing an artist-run space. This envisioned space would eventually become Loam—an artist collaboration, residency, library, and kitchen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they now live and work.
Within Malaysia’s cross-cultural environment, Chandy and Yury explore community work and personal experience on how trace, memory, and transformation shape connection through dialogue and experimentation. Their practice interlaces folklore, belief, and fragments of the past to reveal how time, place, and identity intertwine—drawing inspiration from the mulch process and its regenerative nature.
In the first phase of the work, they developed their research on collaborative practice through back-and-forth exchanges in Phnom Penh in September 2025. They later benefited from a well-equipped studio in Kuala Lumpur and generous support from Rimbun Dahan, which allowed their project to further grow and take shape.
About a five-minute walk from Rimbun Dahan, we discovered a low-lying pond filled with water hyacinth and its purple blossoms—a plant that grows wild in Cambodia and throughout Southeast Asia in the freshwater. People here call it keladi bunting – meaning pregnant yam. We brought the plant back to the studio and experimented with transforming every part of it—from root and stem to flower—into handmade paper. From the kitchen, through the process of cutting, cooking, and then blending the plant elements in the blender, to pressing it with weight pressure and drying it in the sun like our laundry and even ironing it because of the moisture from the rainy season. The process taught us patience, impatience, time, and the feel of the timeless. This brought us to experiment with using photography print collage, layering tracing paper and fabric with our handmade paper.
The core of the residency centers on education, sharing, and exchange. As part of this ethos, they hosted the Re:Present workshop with 13 students at Buku Jalanan Chow Kit — an alternative school in Kuala Lumpur — in which students from 9 to 17 years old imprinted found objects brought from home and school onto clay, then transferred these impressions onto plaster. Through this process, everyday materials became moments of formation, unfolding like a mechanical dialogue. The resulting works will be presented at the Open Studio at Rimbun Dahan.
Meeting people here and travelling to nearby islands — such as Langkawi and Pulau Ketam (Crab Island) — has inspired Chandy and Yury to write stories and poems in their tracking journal, in which they collage photography, drawing, and handwriting created from handmade water-hyacinth paper and found fabric from the Cambodian community. This journal is currently on display at Balai Seni Maybank until 12 December 2025, as part of the Maybank Foundation Artist Fellowship Programme. Inspired by their poems and daily experimental photography during the residency at Rimbun Dahan, Chandy and Yury also compiled their work-in-progress into a video art piece shot inside and outside Rimbun Dahan, involving body performance and a poem-reading voice-over, collaborating with local residents and friends, which will also be shown at the Open Studio.
Just five kilometres away from their studio, Chandy and Yury discovered a Cambodian market where they could experience a taste of home in an unfamiliar place. Speaking in their mother tongue with the locals allowed them to understand the community’s livelihood, resilience, and the hardships of their journeys in Malaysia. With familiar ingredients readily available from the Cambodian market, the artists cooked and shared meals with on-site residents and guests, ensuring they never felt homesick.
Here at Rimbun Dahan, nature, forest, and art blend in a beautiful dance, surrounded by a flourishing garden, giving us a sense of peace and home. Chandy and Yury swam in the pool and the lotus ponds, where the otters live, and one day we discovered a sunken boat beneath the deck. It somehow evoked a sense of longing, as if they had finally found a hidden treasure beneath the water—a dream come true. They brought the boat to the studio to become a performative part of their installation; this constitutes the second phrase of their work.
The title of the interactive performance is Terk Kreung. This is also the name of a traditional Cambodian dipping sauce, often known simply as Kroeung (គ្រឿង). The artists will introduce the audience to Kroeung at the Open Studio.. This Khmer cuisine, prepared with fresh fish, sour notes, chilli, and colourful vegetables sourced from Rimbun Dahan and Pasar Kemboja, as well as keladi bunting flowers, explores shared ingredients, taste, memory, and the longing to belong. It reflects both the artists’ experiences and the lives of the Cambodian community living in Malaysia. The act of preparing, sharing meals, and eating collectively on the floor embodies the spirit of family, warmth, and a profound sense of home.
The third phase of the project will take place in Phnom Penh, where the outcomes of the Open Studio at Rimbun Dahan will be shared. This envisioned space, Loam Collaboration, is planned to officially launch in 2026. Securing and applying for funding to sustain the project is also part of this phase. As an independent, community-based art space, Loam will actively plan and seek grants and other forms of support to ensure its continuity and long-term sustainability.
