Andrew Hem

Gang signs and agriculture: the Cambodian-American artist tells Gary Evans how his art was shaped by growing up between two very different cultures…

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Andrew Hem’s first story is about growing up in the Los Angeles area in the late 80s and early 90s. Andrew copied the graffiti he saw on walls around his neighboured in Culver City. He thought one font in particular – big, blocky letters – looked really cool. so cool, in fact, that he once handed in homework in a schoolbook covered with his own replica of the font. He was 11. His teacher called him to the front of class. “Andrew,” the teacher said, “when did you become a gangster?” Andrew didn’t know his favourite graffiti belonged to a notorious, murderous gang called the Culver City 13.

His second story is about how everybody in Cambodia paints the same way. take, for example, paintings at Angkor Wat, one of the largest religious monuments in the world. they all look like they were done by one person, even though that would have been impossible. His parents are Cambodian – his father’s an artist – but Andrew didn’t learn to paint landscapes the traditional Cambodian way. He learned by studying Edgar Alwin Payne’s paintings of the American West. During a recent visit to Cambodia, he was painting outdoors in a style that was completely unfamiliar to the locals. He overheard people talking behind his back: “What kind of tree is that?”

His third story is about the Khmer Rouge. the regime ruled Cambodia for just four years, but was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century, murdering around 25 per cent of the country’s population. Andrew’s parents fled and eventually settled in California in 1982. But Andrew was born in 1981, neither in Cambodia nor in America, but in Thailand.