Bayon Temple, siem Reap, Cambodia

The Love birds of Bayon Temple is one of my ongoing Ceramic projects in connecting with the heritage of my mothers side. It has always been hard for me to conceptualize what being Cambodian or Cambodian American really means, since I am only half.

A lot of my bi-asian or Bi-racial or bi-cultural people may understand, it’s not always easy fitting in, feeling accepted, feeling seen, or understood when you are two or more halves of a different whole in terms of community and identity.

In the end you become one of the first people to understand there’s not much to do but to accept yourself the way you are and in doing so, you find a little more space in yourself to do so for others.

And that to me is what the image of the love birds on Bayon Temple represents; A story I don’t know clearly, but I can see in that little image created some centuries ago, there was a space where two little love birds were created in the middle of somewhere heightened cultural and imperial labor existed.

Love is being seen even when empires end— and sometimes, only the art and relics that remain to continue to tell the story of our acts of love for these lifetimes are little demented bird image carved in stone that we left behind.

References: Stone relief 1, Stone Relief 2, Stone Relief 3