This painting records the artist’s impressions of Cambodia after his return to live there after 3 decades abroad. It also represents the final stylistic development in Khin’s oeuvre: the integration of string into the surface of the painting, as a symbol of corruption, and also in reference to Theravada Buddhist concepts of interconnection. The scarecrow depicts recalls the haunting memory of the Khmer Rouge period, and the increase in gangsterism and corruption.You Khin (b. 1947, Cambodia; d. 2009, Cambodia) is believed to be the only Cambodian artist who was actively exhibiting before the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge period, who continued to professionally practice and exhibit during the ensuing decades. His work from the 1970s onwards has been consistently engaged with a cubist-like style of semi-abstraction, and with depicting urban scenes, often with an unsentimental focus on migrants and poverty as subject matter. Khin's biography is defined by his travels: living and working in Cambodia until 1973, then in France until 1977, then in Sudan until 1979, then in the Ivory Coast until 1981, then in Qatar until 1999, then in London until 2004, then in Cambodia until his death in 2009.
