Description
Pchum Ben, also known as Ancestor’s Day, is easily the most important festival in the Cambodian calendar. Taking place over a 15-day period between early and mid-October, it culminates on the final day in a celebration where families dress respectfully and visit multiple pagodas to make offerings of food to the spirits of ancestors and monetary donations to the monks who chant sutras to transfer merit to the spirits. After the pagoda visit, families often picnic at scenic spots to eat the leftover festive food. In this artwork, I imagine a small Cambodian family having one such picnic, completely unaware that they are joined by the spirits of many generations of their ancestors. The beast behind them is a Kting Voar, a cattle-like mammal said to have existed in Cambodia and Vietnam, but whose existence is questionable. It is also known as Kting Sipuoh – snake-eating cow – due to a belief that it feeds on poisonous snakes.
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