A New Canvas For Boeung Kak

Photo: Fabien Mouret

A New Canvas For Boeung Kak

Khmer Times/Maddy Crowell Thursday, 10 March 2016 

Another chapter in the neighborhood’s cultural renaissance

Most who have spent time in Cambodia know the story of Boeung Kak Lake. More than 4,000 families were forced to leave their homes to make way for a massive development project. While a few returned, most relocated to the provinces. The neighborhood became a cheap hotbed for junkies. 

“It was a fucking mess,” Marj Arnaud, a French expat who has been living in the Boeung Kak neighborhood for three years, explained. “So many junkies. It was a dark neighborhood.”

I met Arnaud at Simone Art, a café and restaurant she co-founded with Ludi Labille that quietly doubles as a political message: art can rebuild a lost community. 

Arnaud discovered Boeung Kak three years ago, while backpacking solo through Southeast Asia. When she landed in Phnom Penh, she told her tuk tuk driver to take her to the cheapest guesthouse, and he brought her to #10 Guesthouse, a barren sand-colored building that once bordered the lake. 

Ludi Labille shows off a poster for the upcoming Boeung Kak Art Festival. Fabien Mouret

Most guests were turned off by the neighborhood, but for Arnaud it became a source of inspiration. “The eviction ruined a lot. I wanted the neighborhood to be reborn, to recreate it,” she says. Now fluent in Khmer, Arnaud has rarely returned to her home country, in the south of France. Last year, she spent two months in France. “So, I’m good for awhile,” she laughs. 

The idea for Simone Art came to Arnaud during her stay in the neighborhood, and she called her friend Ludi Labille to recruit her as a co-owner.

“I called Ludi, and I said, Cambodia is nice, come see. She came and she said, ‘Wow, it is nice.’” Labille soon moved to co-run Simone Art. 

At the time, two years ago, there were only two running guesthouses. The neighborhood was considered dangerous by many and still had a rampant drug problem.

Together, Labille and Arnaud started with a campaign to clean the streets. They recruited a team of neighbors and expats and wandering backpackers and began by picking up trash and leftover rubble. 

“We started cleaning. We added concrete pavement for roads. We added lights. Then two French people opened businesses. We wanted to develop with art and music. We had many walls, so we thought – we need color.” Around that time, a new generation of Cambodian street artists was starting to rise. Artists quietly began to paint the concrete walls that enclose the area.

“People were still scared [of the neighborhood], so we started creating more events.”

Roughly 40 graffiti artists began to paint from around the world – Colombia, England, the States, New Zealand, France. Slowly, walls that were overbearingly tall and white began to fill with color. Massive, detailed murals of smiling faces now coat the walls. 

One sign reads: “Play with new rules.” A vintage store sells cheap western clothes. The neighborhood is not unlike London’s Soho or New York’s Brooklyn – young, broke artists who cover dilapidated corners of expensive cities with art, which consequently jacks up real estate prices. 

The Boeung Kak neighborhood hasn’t quite reached a level of high-end investment, though. That’s still the largest challenge for Simone Art, which has yet to make a profit.  

“We start everything with our own money,” Arnaud said. 

But for the community, the investment seems to have been worthwhile. The two existing businesses have been joined by seven others – including an incoming lesbian bar and French guesthouse. For Lucky Somnang, one of the few residents to have stayed behind after the community was evicted, the new changes have been immense. 

“People had no jobs when the lake was gone. People were crying. They had to go work at factories, some working with garbage, some selling fruits. I stay because I had a job here,” Lucky told me from #10 Guesthouse where he works. 

“It’s in a good way now. Now it’s clean. It’s in a good way for us.” And for Simone Art, it’s just the beginning. 

For the second annual year, they will host a street festival this weekend to bring attention to Boeung Kak’s growing art scene. Called “Boeung Kak Art,” the festival will feature live hip-hop, urban art, workshops, street art, body painting, and fire shows. All proceeds will go to rebuilding the community.

“It’s a political message, but it’s also a positive message. For some, it’s the first time they’ve seen art on the walls. It starts a discussion in the community about what’s next.”