I picked up this birdcage the other day while browsing an antique shop. It's definitely got an Asian feel to it, and I thought I could use it for one of my thesis pieces. I am going to use it as a representation of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Camodia; formerly a high school and used as the S-21 Prison(Security Prison 21) during the Khmer Rouge Era.




Here is an initial sketch of what I might put into this piece. There are a lot of repetitive elements and depiction of death because that is what S-21 Prison was. It was nothing but procedural death everyday, one by one executions of the remaining great minds of Cambodia. Again this is just an initial sketch and will be thought out further.

I will be illustrating multiple elements that will be cut out, and probably extend from the birdcade on wires, and also some elemetns such as "prisoners" will be placed inside. Rising above the cage will be Comrade Duch, the head of, or asshole, pardon my french, of the S-21 prison. He had final say on who was taken into S-21, how they were to be tortured, question, and then executed. I will be representing him with multiple arms and multiple heads, a common Hindu depiction of deities and demons. Being that Cambodia's belief systems are heavily infuenced in Hindu mythology, I will be using such imagery to assist in the metaphors I illustrate. So here Comrade Duch will be represented as a demon in a familiar depiction of a demon or god in Khmer culture.