Laos' Contemporary Artist Bounpaul Phothyzan

Some countries, if not most, have had long and morality-defining struggles with war across their historical timelines. Artists often draw meaning from these periods of conflict, to illustrate the gravity and severity of their effect on the population-general and the population still unborn. We can see this integration of experience in the works of Laotian artist Bounpaul Phothyzan, who created sculptures made of bombshells laden with greenery in some of his most notable exhibitions as of recent years. Phothyzan's taste for involving the controversial media with his craft, stems from his desire to remind people about the maliciousness of war, and the aftermath of its descent. Despite this, he also infused an overtop of plant-life in these structures, possibly to symbolize the fact that life moves on and pushes through, even overcoming the cold, metal-hard attitudes of war.





His idea of "Turning a Bomb into A Flowerpot", may be criticized as a sympathetic outlook towards the mass genocides that occur in times of turmoil, however we believe that the artist seeks to find a nationalistic or cross-nationalistic redemption of people in general, a forgiveness and regrowth for communities that have battled with each other for territory, power or wealth across the ages.





Man's history and legacy should not be defined by his aggression towards his fellow man, however history has shown us the facts that people are flawed in this area. Still, the desire to outlive and outshine the troubles of war can be seen in the simple expressions of artists like Bounpaul Phothyzan, who simply wish to convey a future where we can thrive, despite the imbalances of history and the atrocities of the past.

Artworks by: Bounpaul Phothyzan, Photography by Mediacorp & the Artist's Publications