The young Cambodian man, Mr. Sorn Saran, transformed the country’s famous small shadow puppets sculpture into Cambodia’s first large-scale shadow sculpture, he incorporates ancient and modern art to describe the family life in Cambodia, which took him about 900 hours of continuous work. Shadow puppetry is an ancient traditional art in Cambodia, with its roots dating back to the pre-Angkor eras of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries. Artists use cowhide, tanned red, to make shadow puppets to retell ancient stories on a white screen illuminated from behind by burning coconut husks, producing shadows for the public to see. After the fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the form of shadow theaters was adopted as a performance of art and is usually performed throughout the country for entertainment, while retaining its rituals.
Interview with (Sorn Saran – Artist):
“I have to manage another team of workers at Siem Reap Province. My job is about imagination, I use my right brain too much, and right now I am like batteries have no power. The size of my shadow puppet is 3m by 2.2m, so it is the biggest in Cambodia, normally the shadow puppet is, 1.5m by 0.7 or 2m maximum, and it uses the skin of one cow. My shadow puppet is a kind of contemporary art, by mixing ancient art and modern art. The meaning of this shadow puppet is about my customer’s family life, I sketched the picture more than 30 times to have a correct one.”
Source- A24