It's really hard when you read literature in a language that's not your own. There are all these cultural references you have to be born into that particular language to get.
For me, the more I understand the story of others, the greater I am able to learn and help other people.
Sometimes the mere connection we make with each other can change people's lives. It doesn't have to be something big. The mere fact that you're interested in them makes them happy.
Even though I'm not privileged in the money world, I'm privileged in other ways: I had greater access to education, I can travel, etc. It's the same with writing: the freedom to move in and out of different places, of different realms of existence, of different life forms.
Sometimes it may be something I hear in the news that affects me.
Often when people tell their story, they talk about their strengths and resiliency. It's really about their determination and their aspiration to survive and live.
In This Body Mystery, even though it was written in the voice of people with HIV/AIDS, it's about how people come to accept their fate and their sickness. It's about accepting the way your life is.
I used to despair about the condition of the world, to feel a sense of hopelessness; now I find more and more that I need to focus on what I can do, however little it is, to help others.
Whether I affect one person or an entire family, or even a group of people, I feel like I have resources and education and ability and skills that some people may not be fortunate enough to acquire. But by sharing and inquiring, being a listener, and being interested in the stories of other people and their lives, I can also pull things out and say "What can I do for them? What can I share with them that may alleviate some of their suffering?"
When you make art, those things change shape into something else. It's transformation into a body of different visual elements.
I don't approach my writing or my work from an academic or analytical point of view. I do it for myself.
There are multiple things entering in your mind.
I think that there are certain feelings and things you can convey in a simple form that people can see and understand.
A lot of my work is process-oriented. I delve into my work and sit alone in silence and work with the material and process it, like talking to yourself.
How am I placing myself in the world of other people around me? For me, I feel that I am not really alone, that others can feel it too. I see art in this way.
I think every person has a unique story to tell and we each have the different life events that happen to us and sometimes we may feel sympathetic toward a certain aspect of that life event.
I'm doing a collaborative project with another artist, Mary Hamill. My project is to gather the oral history of war widows, starting with the women of my village, Kop Nymit.
I've been coming to Cambodia off and on, six months of the year usually.
The family I grew up in had three generations of widows.
I met Mary [Hamill] in New York at my exhibition and when I told her about my oral history project she asked, "Would it be possible to incorporate visual art?" My sister stitches pillowcases, which led to Mary suggesting using cyanotype on them. I originally thought of the idea of pillowcases because when people get married, they have the bride and the groom lay their hands on each other's pillows while their relatives tie ribbons on their wrists. And then on the bed you usually have two pillows - one for yourself and one for your loved one - so when one is gone, one pillow remains.
I thought of the pillowcases as a symbol of love and loss, of retaining the memory of your loved one.
Some people have witnessed the killing of their husbands, or they survived other horrific things. My sister is a widow but her husband was killed after the Khmer Rouge. There are different periods in which violence has occurred, and differences in how these women became widowed and how they survived afterwards.
In Cambodian culture the male figure in the family is important; when you lose your husband you lose your economic ability to survive.
All throughout my work, even in the United States, I have worked with the greater Cambodian community.
You get closer to your own humanity by understanding the stories of other people and the struggles they have.
