Amy Lee Sanford, a Cambodian-American artist with an international reputation, will participate in the RISD Museum’s exhibition “Repair and Design Futures” through a powerful, one-afternoon performance of a gallery installation entitled Break Pot: Benefit St., a shortened version of the six day durational performance called Full Circle.

Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and raised in the United States, Sanford holds a degree from Brown University in the Visual Arts. Her work references the deep personal significance of family separation, cultural destruction and death associated with the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, and the long, slow process of reconstruction in the decades that have followed. She investigates the intersection of trauma and healing, the healing processes of repetition, recollection and repair, and the defragmentation of history.

Sanford has been in numerous exhibitions internationally, most recently Memory | Commitment | Aspiration (Arkansas, 2018), Cinerama: Art and the Moving Image (Singapore, 2017-18), Love in the Time of War (San Francisco, 2016) and Images Biennial: An Age of Our Own Making (Denmark, 2016).

This piece is a particularly powerful evocation of individual, social and cultural repair. The performance takes place over three hours; visitors are welcome to drop in for part of it or stay for the duration.

Sponsored by: The RISD Museum, the Division of Liberal Arts Humanities Fund and a Research Collaboration and Event Grant, and the Turner Fund

Photo credit: Amy Lee Sanford, Full Circle (Day 3) Amy Lee Sanford - 2012 Durational Performance