Philippe Cheaoum

Philippe Chea Oum is a French artist based in Marseille. His work, which focuses on drawing and painting, draws on a strong interest in illustration and storytelling, and is rooted in his family history and the places where he grew up.

The son of Cambodian-born chefs, he spent much of his childhood in the kitchen of the family restaurant. His parents, who sought refuge in France after fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, chose to set aside their native culture to facilitate his integration. From this distance springs a quest: to reconstruct, through drawing, an environment and gestures that were both passed down to him and, in part, silenced.

Drawing thus becomes an extension of the body and a tool for storytelling. In it, he rediscovers something of the work in the kitchen: a practice built on repetition, precision, and improvisation. The gesture is quick, direct, often left open to chance. As in the kitchen, it is a matter of working with what happens, of adjusting, of transforming.

His images function as narrative fragments, reenacting scenes of labor in which bodies and tools shift into slightly unstable, sometimes absurd forms, revealing a subtle sense of humor. His painting, which bears a certain resemblance to the expressive tensions of Philip Guston or the distorted narratives of Dana Schutz, remains permeated by a more diffuse imagination, nourished by the images he grew up with in the early 2000s.

His work thus unfolds as a return in motion: a way of re-inhabiting, through gesture and narrative, places, practices, and a family history.

This series of drawings draws on the conventions of comic books to immerse the viewer in the heart of a kitchen. It reveals what goes on behind the scenes: rapid movements, tension, and ingredients in the process of transformation. Dishes, tools, and preparations become the true subjects, treated as forms that are both concrete and expressive.

Drawing on direct experience of the environment, this work offers a rare and embodied perspective on this world, far removed from idealized representations. The drawing, lively and spontaneous, retains the traces of the gesture: errors, accidents, and energy are integral to the image, just as they are in the kitchen.

Through humor, anagrams, and reinterpretations, familiar visual codes—stainless steel, chef’s hats, aprons—are transformed into a unique graphic language, both accessible and rich in meaning.

The installation extends into the space with three-dimensional pieces, presented in the form of “doggy bags.” These objects bring the drawings to life, create a path, and invite the viewer to physically enter the world depicted.

At the intersection of narrative drawing and installation, this work offers an immersive and immediate experience, while casting a sensitive and fresh gaze on a world that is often invisible.