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| Svay Sareth made the canoe by hand without any boat-building experience |
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| Svay Sareth is making a name for himself and for Cambodia |
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| Svay Sareth’s paintings of fighting fish |
17 April 2011
By Guy De Launey
BBC News, Siem Reap
The man with the boat clearly means business.
He is pushing the trailer-mounted vessel by hand down a red, dirt road – walking as quickly as a soldier barracked by a splenetic sergeant-major.
His choice of clothes matches the military theme: black from toe to neck, like the Khmer Rouge troops which took control of Cambodia’s towns and cities in the 1970s.
A camouflage-green facemask completes the outfit, covering the boat-pusher’s features, making him as inscrutable as Iron Man.
But Svay Sareth is neither a soldier nor a superhero. He is an artist, and this is part of his work – a performance and multimedia exhibition called Tuesday.
Sareth had made the small, traditional canoe by hand without any previous boat-building experience. And its short journey over land was highly symbolic – from his home on the dusty, semi-rural outskirts of Siem Reap to a five-star hotel in Cambodia’s prime tourist location near the Angkor temples.
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