Source: http://anulib.anu.edu.au/subjects/ap/digilib/cam/
About the drawings
This is a collection of 88 original artworks by Bun Heang Ung of his personal experience under the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979. It is a series of black and white drawings in Indian ink on art paper. At the back of each of the works is the caption written in English and some with handwritten Khmer script. 60 of the original 90 pieces were published in The Murderous Revolution: Life & Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea in 1985 as a co-publication between Ung and Martin Stuart-Fox. In 2008, 87 drawings were uploaded onto Ung's blogsite (http://khmerrouge-toons.blogspot.com.au) with text recounting the event to accompany each image.
Each piece of artwork in the collection is a detailed representation of the conditions of work and living under the Khmer Rouge regime. Hardship, affliction, despondency, desperation and varied other emotions are vividly depicted in the characters drawn. The textured story-telling in both the foreground and background of each piece furnishes a fuller and nuanced impression of the times and circumstance.
Background
These pieces were drawn between 1980 and 1981, shortly after Bun Heang and Phiny arrived in Brisbane (and then later in Sydney) as refugees from Cambodia. Due to his limited language capacity at that time, drawing was the best means for Ung to communicate the trauma he and Phiny had undergone. In an interview for New South Wales' Migration Heritage project, Phiny recounted "We have no photograph and we worry we may forget. So it's sort of an archive". (http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/stories/phiny-ung). So every night during those months, they recorded their experiences in ink. Ung wrote later that each drawing took twelve hours to complete:
