ARTIST EM RIEM
Em
Riem
Cambodian designer and artist. Furniture, objects and ideas rooted in Khmer craft tradition and a completely contemporary eye.
Em Riem · Phnom Penh
"Design in Cambodia is not separate from survival or identity. It is how a culture proves to itself that it still exists."
Em Riem is a Cambodian designer and artist working in Phnom Penh at one of the most interesting moments in the city's recent history: a generation of young Cambodian creatives who grew up without direct memory of the war, building practices that are simultaneously deeply rooted in Khmer tradition and completely engaged with global contemporary design. His furniture and objects are the work of someone who understands that the ordinary objects of daily life are never simply functional. They carry history, identity, and the accumulated decisions of a culture about what beauty is and what it is for.
The chair in the photograph tells you most of what you need to know: rattan framework, clean geometric lines, a blue exercise ball inside as the seat. It is playful and precise simultaneously. It does not apologise for being beautiful, and it does not apologise for being Cambodian. That combination is rarer than it should be, and it is exactly what makes his work worth paying attention to.
My work is rooted in the materials and craft traditions of Cambodia. Rattan, bamboo, natural fibres: materials that have been worked here for centuries by people who understood their properties completely. I am interested in what happens when you bring those materials into a contemporary design conversation without losing what makes them specific to this place.
I do not separate them. Craft is design at the level of the hand. Design is craft at the level of the idea. In Cambodia, where so much was destroyed and had to be rebuilt, the question of how to make things is also always a question of who you are and where you come from. I design as a Cambodian, not as someone who happens to be making things in Cambodia. That distinction matters to me very much.
"A younger generation of Cambodian entrepreneurs are bringing a sharper design sensibility and a stronger understanding of global standards while rooting their work in Khmer identity."
Vanna Sann, Dorsu · On Phnom Penh's creative renaissanceThe craftspeople who work alongside me. The materials themselves, which have their own logic and their own requirements. The city around me, which is changing so fast that every year I look at it differently. And the question of what it means to make something beautiful in a place that has had so much beauty taken from it. That question never leaves me alone, and I do not want it to.
"As a developing country, it's a lot easier to implement change. If you were in Hong Kong or Singapore, it would be much more difficult. That creative freedom is the gift Phnom Penh gives its designers."
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