Artist residency of 9 weeks, between February and June 2017.
Exposure to La Mostra de Givors, place du Suel, 69700 Givors, from 16.09 to 16.12.2017.
Support by the DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the city of Givors and the University of Paris 8.
In Po Sim Sambath's approach, there is first of all a territory that will become a “backdrop”. But the place does not interest her if it is empty and it is with patience and determination that she goes to meet those who invest in it. The conjunction of the two - the place and the group of individuals - becomes the starting point of his work.
« By leaning on these places, I concentrate on questions of borders, limits and between two. I try to produce ambiguity, to account for a certain uncertainty in things, an uncertainty that is more strongly experienced in the margins. »Po Sim Sambath
During his regular stays in Givors, by dint of crisscrossing the city, meeting locals who show him its corners, Po Sim Sambath enters the Fives-Lille factory. The old workers' building is charismatic, extremely photogenic. So how do you approach it? How to avoid the pitfalls and redundancies associated with the photography of brownfields? Po Sim Sambath finds her way: walking around the place, she comes across strange installations of wooden panels. Thousands of marbles litter the ground.
She leads the investigation and meets the new occupants: a club of Airsoft (ball shooting game) which invests the place during sports games. There are also local employees who sometimes come to play badminton. The place has found a new use.
The transformation of a place dedicated to work into a leisure space is not a new or exceptional fact. Everywhere old factories are rehabilitated, often for places of culture and entertainment. What does this say about our society? Without taking a position, Po Sim Sambath relies on this observation to install his project.
Po Sim Sambath does not hide. She is seen and accepted by those she photographs. His approach to people is direct and sincere. Short explanations and directives, here she begins to strafe. Camera operator and journalist for L'Atelier A of the Arte channel, the artist cultivates a plastic but also documentary approach. His gaze is neutral. She observes, allows everyone to observe and then position themselves.
Here, Po Sim Sambath lent herself to the game by donning military clothing, goggles, gloves and accessories. His yellow vest will not prevent him from tasting the stinging sensation of the ball shot once. Slender but solid silhouette, she immerses herself in actions, making adrenaline and concentration perceptible. The race of the players Airsoft becomes for her a digital burst shooting, she hides like them in the labyrinth of ambushes, like them she aims, like them she shoots.
« My practice takes shape in a social soil, within defined territories. So far, what I have tried to do in my work is to give back a place - aesthetic, poetic, to groups of people who are locked in a representation. I seek through my photographs to offer a different image of the people in the territories that I travel, an image attentive to the gestures, to the expressions of the body, and coming to question both our relations to representation and to architecture. »Po Sim Sambath
The result of the residency was exhibited at the Mostra de Givors, in September 2017.
