Junk Nutrients (2009), a bamboo, rattan and wire sculpture by Sopheap Pich

Asian Art MuseumCivic Center, San Francisco

Art from Contemporary Cambodia

Now showing27 August 2026 – 25 January 2027$20

Sopheap Pich and Leang Seckon, key figures of Cambodia's post-Khmer Rouge art revival, turn bamboo, rattan, textiles and found materials into works on memory and loss.

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On now All of October 2026

Part of Junk Nutrients came off a rubbish heap. In the late 2000s Sopheap Pich salvaged plastic, rubber, metal and cloth from the trash heaps of a fast-growing Phnom Penh and bound them into bamboo and rattan with wire. The Guggenheim describes the 2009 sculpture's "mottled, rag-tag look". The museum acquired it in 2025.

It shares the Tateuchi Gallery with Leang Seckon. Both artists were born in the 1970s, lived through the Khmer Rouge genocide and became key figures in Cambodia's art revival in the early 2000s. Pich weaves abstract sculpture; his Receding Waves (2015) stands over eight feet tall. Seckon builds collages from photographs, paint and recycled textiles. You'll find two of his Freedom canvases, each about five feet tall, from the Heavy Skirt series. In 1970 his mother, pregnant with him during the bombing, owned one skirt and kept patching it until it grew heavy.

No separate ticket: it's included with general admission ($20, free for 12 and under), and Thursdays run until 8 PM.

Look for

Junk Nutrients (2009)
Look for plastic, rubber, metal and cloth salvaged from Phnom Penh's trash heaps, bound into a bamboo and rattan frame with wire.
Seckon's two Freedom canvases (2010 and 2011)
Two mixed-media paintings about five feet tall from the Heavy Skirt series, named for the patched skirt his mother wore while pregnant with him in wartime.