Angkêt Exhibition
SOSORO Museum has expanded into the former Banque de l’Indochine, a gorgeous colonial-era building in Phnom Penh’s historic Post Office quarter. The bank established its Phnom Penh branch in 1891 and played a central role in the colonial economy, issuing and circulating the piastre across French Indochina. After passing through several incarnations, including a private residence, a state bank, Van’s Restaurant, and more recently a club, the restored building became a SOSORO extension in 2024. Its old vaults, garnished balconies and armoured doors make a fitting, if slightly loaded, setting for exploring Cambodia’s monetary and colonial history.
Its new temporary exhibition, Angkêt de mots: When Khmer Meets French, looks at the French words that have slipped into everyday Khmer and gradually become Cambodian in their pronunciation and use. Through archival material, videos, games and playful displays, it presents language as something porous, constantly borrowed, adapted and reinvented. It also places Cambodia within a much wider colonial experience, in which the language of the occupying power outlived the colonial administration itself.
It’s a fun and accessible exhibition, though its lightness is also its main limitation. By emphasizing linguistic exchange and the meeting of two cultures, it largely sidesteps the unequal power relationship that enabled French to enter Khmer in the first place. Language under colonialism was never exchanged on entirely equal terms: it was tied to administration, education, segregation, class and access to power. A little more attention to that imbalance would have given the exhibition greater depth.
Something eerie about these leather puppets
I visited on a random Tuesday and made my way through the entire exhibition in about ten minutes. As much as the displays themselves, what impressed me was the renovation of this gorgeous building; the restored details, the preserved ciment tiles, and the sheer atmosphere of the former bank are almost an exhibition in their own right.
Still, Angkêt de mots (borrowing from the French word “enquête”) is playful, engaging, and short enough to enjoy without museum fatigue. It makes an excellent follow-up to SOSORO’s main building, just a two-minute walk away.
