Famous artist and famous athlete. Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and President of the Tae Kwon Do Federation of Kyiv Region. He is a teacher of fine arts and a master instructor in Tae Kwon Do of the international category, a black belt. A native of the Cambodian capital and a citizen of Ukraine. A graduate of the Royal School of Arts of Cambodia and the Kyiv State Art Institute (now the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture). All this is not about two, but about one person – Uk Dar Chan, whose personal exhibition of paintings and drawings opened on March 13 at the Center for Culture and Arts of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
He was born on December 14, 1961, in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, but for most of his life – for 40 years! – he has lived in Ukraine, 30 of them in the city of Berezan in Kyiv region. He works here, started a family here, and his children were born here. The story of Uk Dar Chan and the circumstances in which he had to grow up and man up could be the subject of a novel, perhaps even an adventure novel. When asked by a Kyiv Polytechnic correspondent whether he felt like a Khmer or a Ukrainian, he replied: “I can’t separate it. I have been living here for 40 years, and I have lived in Cambodia for only 24. I think I have more of a Ukrainian mentality, even though they say that mentality cannot be changed. But no, it is both Ukrainian and Cambodian.” And this can be seen in his works, but more on that below. As for the certain duality of his professional interests – martial arts and fine arts – he said this: “I always say that my profession is an artist, and my lifestyle is Tae Kwon Do.”
Therefore, not only representatives of the Ukrainian artistic community, but also the president of the Tae Kwon Do Federation of ITF Ukraine Viktor Poternak spoke at the opening of the exhibition. He noted that the team from Kyiv region consistently takes second or third place in terms of the number of athletes participating in national-level Tae Kwon Do competitions, largely due to the activity of the president of the Kyiv Regional Federation, Uk Dar Chan.
A lot of good and interesting things about Uk Dar Chan were told by his colleagues in art and old friends – the artist and head of the Harmony art studio at the CCA Andriy Kulagin and the honored journalist of Ukraine and founder of the Come Back Alive art project Serhiy Komisarov.
Andriy Kulagin expressed an apt idea that Uk Dara Chan opens up Asian civilization with its specifically Asian vision of the world, way of thinking and mythology to Ukrainians who belong to European culture and imagery.
There were many tragic moments in the artist’s biography, especially at the beginning of his life, which Serhiy Komisarov mentioned in his speech. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia, which in less than 5 years killed from 1.5 to 3 million of their compatriots, primarily former civil servants, military, intellectuals, Buddhist monks, representatives of the wealthy, etc. “After the Khmer Rouge came to power, I lived like Mowgli in the jungle,” said Uk Dara Chan. Unfortunately, my father was killed because he was an officer and held a high position, my sister and her husband, who were diplomats, were killed…” Only after the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime in 1979 did he manage to return to normal life. Soon after, he became a student at the Royal School of Art, after which he was sent to study in Kyiv as the best graduate of the Graphic Arts Department. However, as Andriy Kulagin noted, the terrible years of his early youth did not embitter him, did not make him a beast, he became kinder and this kindness he gives to the audience.
Nevertheless, the attention of everyone who came to the Center for Culture and Arts on March 13 was primarily focused on the master’s works. After all, they contain an attentive and friendly artist’s view of Ukraine, unmuddied by thousands of familiar details from the cradle, and an equally fresh look at his distant homeland. And this is understandable: he first saw and felt our country as an adult, and he perceives his native country primarily through the prism of his memories of childhood and youthful cognition of the world around him, its beauty, colorfulness and diversity of life. This is a real dialog of cultures, because the works presented at the exhibition combine Khmer and Ukrainian worldview and, so to speak, worldview. Of course, the works on Cambodian themes are somewhat romantic, they may even seem a bit fairy-tale to us, but they should be viewed for a long time and slowly, so that at some point you can suddenly almost physically plunge into the fantastic world of mysterious pagodas, lush vegetation, elephants, monkeys, tigers and fragile Khmer beauties. And next to them are Ukrainian beauties decorated with wreaths, landscapes of Kyiv and well-painted realistic still lifes.
The exhibition of works by Wook Dar Chan at the CCA is called “I Love. Creating. Hope”. “I love – I love Cambodia and Ukraine,” the author deciphered the title of the exhibition, ”I create – I am engaged in creativity and my works are in front of you. I hope that peace will return to Ukraine.”
This is the second exhibition of the artist in KPI. It features 64 of his paintings and graphic works. The first one, as Victoria Tiotkina, the head of the Art Gallery of the CCA, told the guests of the vernissage, took place 18 years ago. This year the audience can see many new works, including a whole series of those created during the large-scale war that Russia is waging against our country – portraits of Ukrainian women (sometimes a bit like Cambodian women – this also reflects the duality of its fate and perception of the world); symbolic, almost poster-like images of our defenders together with those they protect. By the way, as a sign of respect, the artist presented the KPI Art Gallery with one of his watercolors – a portrait of our young compatriot in an embroidered shirt (pictured).
The works of Uk Dar Chan are decorated in museums, art galleries and private collections in Australia, Great Britain, Holland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the USA, Yugoslavia, France, and, of course, Ukraine.
In the photo: the master’s works