Coming to Silicon Valley Comic Con, 2017

Just confirmed, Nor Sanavongsay, Samouro Baccam and I will be at this year's Silicon Valley Comic Con, presenting the panel Expanding Horizons: Southeast Asia in Comics! See you there!

"For many, Southeast Asia is primarily presented in comics tied to the Vietnam War, and the beginning of the refugee journey for over a million people from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In this panel we look at how comics depict this journey from the pages of Iron Man, the Punisher, and G.I. Joe to G.B. Tran's award-winning Vietnamerica and the DC comics hero Katharsis. We will also examine the newer stories emerging in mainstream and independent comics."

We presented in the very first Silicon Valley Comic Con in 2016. We're honored to have one of our proposal accepted for a second year!

[Poet Spotlight] Anida Youei Ali

Anida Yoeu Ali (b.1974, Battambang) is an artist whose works span performance, installation, video, images, public encounters, and political agitation. She is a first generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. After residing for over three decades outside of Cambodia, Ali returned to work in Phnom Penh as part of her 2011 U.S. Fulbright Fellowship. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, her installation and performance works investigate the artistic, spiritual and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identity.

Ali’s artistic work has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Ali earned her B.F.A. from University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and an M.F.A. from the Art Institute Chicago.

She is a founding collaborative partner of Studio Revolt, an independent artist run media lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Studio Revolt’s public performances and resulting images of Gallery X and Public Square were part of Our City Festival 2011 and 2012 (Phnom Penh). Ali’s "The Buddhist Bug," a multidisciplinary work that investigates displacement and identity through humor, absurdity and performance, has been exhibited in Phnom Penh galleries, Singapore International Photography Festival, Malaysia Heritage Centre Singapore, Southeast Asia ArtsFest London, and featured at the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale where Ali participated as an artist in residence.

In 2015 "The Buddhist Bug" was featured in the Open Sea exhibition at the Musée d’art Contemporain (Lyon, France) and at the Asia Pacific Triennial 8 at the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia) where a newly commissioned video of the series was premiered. Additionally, Ali performed a new piece, "Beheadings," at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), specifically commissioned for the "Secret Archipelago" exhibition. Later she exhibited works from the "Enter" series at the international event Lille 3000 (Lille, France). Ali’s artworks are included in several private collections and the public collection of the Mainland Art Fund, Australia.

[Poet Spotlight] Kosal Khiev

photo by Vinh Dao

Kosal Khiev is a poet, tattoo artist, and survivor of the US prison system. Born in a Thai refugee camp, Kosal’s family fled to the U.S in 1981. Kosal’s family left the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge war for the promise of peace and prosperity in America. Instead of the American dream, Kosal’s family lived in grim public housing with scarce social services.

Kosal admits to making poor choices as a teenager that led him into more violence, poverty, and eventually prison. At the age of 16, Kosal was arrested in a gang fight and charged with attempted murder. Kosal was tried as an adult and sentenced to 16 years in a state penitentiary. While serving 14 years in prison he discovered spoken word poetry from a former Vietnam War veteran. Spoken word became his creative channel to tell his own story and transform his anger, regrets, and experiences into a poetic art form.

"Kosal Preys" Photo by Tori Green

Upon release in 2011, the U.S. government deported him to Cambodia, a country he had never been. Since his arrival, Kosal has used poetry to uplift his situation, with compelling performances at NERD night, The Body Open Mic series, and Mao’s. Kosal has also been selected as the first artist-in-residence with Studio Revolt, a new media lab based in Phnom Penh, where he is collaborating on “Spoken Kosal: Verses in Exile,” a series of short films featuring his poetry. He cites Rainer Maria Rilke, Etheridge Knight, Tupac, and Eminem as some of his favorite poets. He has additionally lectured at the Royal University of Phnom Penh on the topic of US immigration and its juvenile detention system.

He hopes one day the U.S. will repeal the unjust deportation law so that families can reunite. Until then, Kosal lives as an exiled American in Phnom Penh where he continues to share his story and art at open mics, universities, and public stages.

[Poet Spotlight] Monica Sok

Monica Sok is a Cambodian poet from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the chapbook "Year Zero," winner of the 2015 PSA Chapbook Fellowship 30 and Under, selected by Marilyn Chin.

A Kundiman fellow, Sok has received scholarships from Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, and Bread Loaf writers' conferences. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, Narrative, and Ninth Letter, among others. She holds a MFA degree from NYU, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature for her poetry. She presently lives in Brooklyn.