WAT PAINTING IN CAMBODIA By San Phalla

Wat Painting in Cambodia is a book edited by the Cambodgian Reyum Institute (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) following San Phalla's research project on paintings in Wats. An exhibition of the same name was held at the institute in May 2007 to present this research. The Khmer version is displayed on this page. 

The project is a result from the survey of traditional and modern paintings found in more than 600 monasteries throughout Cambodia. The book examines mural paintings for their religious and historical significance and analyzes how representational paintings are depicted and selected to transmit the teachings of Cambodia’s two main religions, Buddhism and Brahminism.

Soft cover, 351 Color illustrations. 

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A wat is a type of Buddhist and Hindu temple in Cambodia, Laos, East Shan State, Yunnan, the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, and Thailand. 

In 2001, Reyum Institute started a research project on paintings in Wats (Buddhist temples). The aim of the project was to photograph the mural paintings found in most Wats in Cambodia as well as collecting data about the temples through interviews. San Phalla, who just graduated from the Department of Archaeology in Phnom Penh was the first researcher to conduct the field research. Because most of temples tend to replace old paintings by recovering them with new ones, or simply knocking down the buildings themselves, we were faced with the urgency to document as many temples as possible instead of studying each of them in details. Thus we could not study each of them in details.

For more than six years, from 2001 to 2006, San Phalla and other fellow young researchers Tho Pisey, Thon Sopheak visited more than 600 Wats in all over Cambodia and took over 20,000 photographs of temple paintings along with brief notes on each temple. Our choice to document prove to be a good one as today several temples we surveyed have been knocked down and replaced with new structures without any documentations.

Description of the project by the Reyum Institute.

Research and Documentation: 
Conception : Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (founders of Reyum Publishing)
Researchers: San Phalla (2001-2006), Tho Pisey (2001), Thon Sopheak (2002-2005)