In Monologue, a gemlike new video by the Cambodian artist VANDY RATTANA, a pair of verdant, lofty mango trees intertwine above a rice paddy, while in a tranquil voiceover he speaks to a sister he has never met. “It is extremely hard to try to know you through the photograph,” the artist apostrophizes; his sister died before he was born, she and millions more. At the mass grave where she lies, it is the dry season. Three women, hunched over like Millet’s Gleaners, sift through the parched rice straw. The mango trees are in bloom, so fragrant Vandy struggles to breathe, and they have been fertilized by the dead of Cambodia: right underfoot, unnamed, unforgettable. “The nature of men is to kill one another,” he says, and the leaves of the mango trees rustle above.
