Still Water, Slumbering Dragon

The Tonlé Sap, South-east Asia’s largest freshwater lake, has influenced the Khmer civilization since its beginning. During the wet season, the water in the Mekong backs up into the lake, turning swathes of dry land into flooded forests, which then become one of the most incredible freshwater fish spawning grounds on earth. The aquafauna depicted in this illustration were once plentiful in the Tonlé Sap, but some, such as the Irrawaddy dolphin, can now only be found in small pockets of the Mekong River. Depicted here too are the Reachisey, a mythical creature unique to Cambodian mythology, the monkey deity Hanuman and his lover, the mermaid Sovan Macha.

Printed on premium art paper and sold unframed.

A4: 21cm x 29.7cm

A3: 29.7cm x 42cm

Joshua is a Singapore born artist now based in Phnom Penh. Ever since he successfully sold the only copy of his first original hand-drawn comic-book The Adventures of Hercules and Odysseus to his mother for a meal at the age of nine, Joshua Chiang has been filled with an unquenchable belief that he will achieve greatness in the realm of visual storytelling. In 2017, Joshua started Candid Cambodia, a collection of illustrations about what’s peculiar in Cambodia. He draws his inspiration from the day to day happenings in the streets of Phnom Penh. Joshua is probably most well-known in Cambodia for his pile-up art illustration of a motordop ferrying a large number of passengers and much more, capturing the spirit of anything goes in this country.