Loven Ramos a Visual Poet in Cambodia
Loven
Ramos
Visual poet. Graphic designer. Artist. Interior designer. Boutique owner. Gallery founder. Hotel general manager. Cambodian colouring book for the Jolie-Pitt children. This is Cambodia. Everything is possible.
Loven Ramos · Siem Reap, Cambodia
"This is perhaps what's great about Cambodia: you sow a few seeds, then soon you'll end up having a forest."
Loven Ramos arrived in Siem Reap in 2005 after Googling the city in response to a forwarded email about a hotel looking for a graphic designer. He saw magical black and white photographs of Angkor by John McDermott and thought, as he puts it, that it looked "like a gorgeous place for a hood." He emailed his CV as a joke, got a call hours later, went home to his island in the Philippines two weeks after that, got married in his parents' garage, and two days later was on his way to Cambodia. His wife followed three months later. Their son was born shortly after. This is, broadly speaking, how Loven Ramos makes decisions.
Since then he has accumulated a career portfolio that is bewilderingly diverse: artist, interior designer, entrepreneur, writer, photographer, visual poet, boutique shop owner, gallery owner, guesthouse owner, and general manager of major hotels. He has created a customised Cambodian colouring book for Maddox, Pax and Zahara Jolie-Pitt, done landscape design for their mother and father, designed a menu for the late King Norodom Sihanouk, written about Siem Reap for National Geographic, and been an official photographer for Ricky Martin. "I know they all sound confusing and worlds apart," he says. "But they all gave me specific creative highs that are all different from one another."
I've always loved architecture and have forever used it as a reference point. The works of Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, I.M. Pei and Santiago Calatrava have been such vivid visual orgasms for me. I have also drawn a lot of inspiration from fashion: from Alexander McQueen to Hussein Chalayan and Nicolas Ghesquiere.
Jam and I set up ArtDeli in response to the global recession which closed a whole lot of art galleries in Siem Reap. Some of our artist friends lost outlets to show their work, so we opted to have an alternative space where we can market art as a grocery: affordable and accessible to ordinary mortals. We tried to make it inexpensive by slashing down our percentage from the sales and asking the artists to do work that would be more financially accessible to the public. This was also a reaction to art as an institution: we want to make the connection between artists and art enthusiasts easier.
"There was this art collector from Venice who hated me because he said he had to repaint his entire house to give justice to the artworks he bought from me. I felt elated."
Loven Ramos · On the most interesting response to his workAlthough I hate to admit it, my monk series and beaded photo-based artworks have been my biggest sellers. It was because of this series that I was able to afford opening up Poetry and ArtDeli. But I am so way over that series now.
It is a unique hybrid hotel, gallery and art space in Siem Reap. We've opened two main galleries, four artist's studios, and the Nostalgia boutique. Soon we will be opening four more artist's studios and the cafe. It is named after the year of the building. The 1961 approach is that the building itself is the art, and everything inside it extends from that premise. Cambodia gives you the freedom to try things that would be impossible elsewhere. If you sow a few seeds here, you end up with a forest.
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