Lecturer Samnang Riebe Named 2023 Boston Artadia Finalist

Samnang “Sam” Riebe, who is a part-time lecturer at Montserrat, has been named a 2023 Boston Artadia Awards Finalist open to visual artists working in any visual media, at any stage in their career, who have been living and working within Bristol, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk counties for a minimum of two years. All finalists will hold virtual studio visits with second-round jurors, who will ultimately select three artists to receive $15,000 in unrestricted funds. The 2023 Boston Artadia Awards are supported by the Liberty Mutual, Meraki Artist Award, Wagner Foundation, the Artadia Board of Directors, Artadia Council supporters, and individual donors across the country.

Riebe’s piece pictured bottom left.

Samnang Riebe is a Visual Artist based in Boston. He earned a BFA from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2010 and an MFA from the Massachusett College of Art and Design in 2015. Born to an immigrant family, and who’s upbringing was split between the city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the Greater Boston area, Riebe utilizes a creative practice of painting and sculpture as a means for introspection and investigation of ritual, tradition, and expression to navigate the intergenerational complexities of community and identity in today’s America.

Being of a place, being of a family, belonging to–– or conversely being ‘of-or-on the other side’; there is richly packed meaning within these ideas that Riebe has found worth investigating through painting and object-making. Riebe’s material sensibilities derive from personally significant domestic objects that function as intriguing tensions or wrinkles, in consideration to his own multi-racial identity and multi-cultural upbringing in America. These objects are rejiggered and reappropriated toward an abstract visual language that speaks to the customs, language, and color from his Khmer heritage, along with the frustrations, tensions, and challenges of a life between two cultures.

You can follow more of Riebe’s work at his Instagram page or website.