I met Mary [Hamill] in New York at my exhibition and when I told her about my oral history project she asked, "Would it be possible to incorporate visual art?" My sister stitches pillowcases, which led to Mary suggesting using cyanotype on them. I originally thought of the idea of pillowcases because when people get married, they have the bride and the groom lay their hands on each other's pillows while their relatives tie ribbons on their wrists. And then on the bed you usually have two pillows - one for yourself and one for your loved one - so when one is gone, one pillow remains.

I thought of the pillowcases as a symbol of love and loss, of retaining the memory of your loved one.

Sometimes I fantasize about learning to write in Khmer. Because if I could write in Khmer, my perspective would be very different, because I'm both an outsider and insider and I see the writing in a different way. My description would be different from, say, a local writer.

I have some advantages of viewing from the two lenses, the two perspectives. I think that a lot of visual artists who come back here from the United States and are Cambodian also write from their American references - looking inside the old culture, and looking at themselves as an American looking into the country where they were born.

I've been coming to Cambodia off and on, six months of the year usually.

Often when people tell their story, they talk about their strengths and resiliency. It's really about their determination and their aspiration to survive and live.

It's like you're organically developing yourself, moving out, metamorphosing into other forms depending on where you are, what you're doing at the time, how you want to play on things.