Bretagne, 2021

Aline Khieu  

Born in 1989, Aline Khieu lives in Paris. She was born in France, in Dole (39), the last stopover for the family welcomed in a center for refugees.

Her parents fled the massacres of the Khmer Rouge, and her brothers, four in number, were born in Cambodia, then in Thailand and Malaysia.

The family settled in Île de France. Of the previous life of her parents, she knows little, but her mother, when she was young, made pocket money by selling drawings of apsaras, these goddesses of the Mekong, in the street... "In the family, everyone draws, my brothers were crazy about comic book culture".

Aline Khieu was thirteen when she sent her first drawing to a Japanese publisher.

It will be published three years later in a Manga.

When she became independent at the age of eighteen, she started working in business. She setteld in Berlin for a year in 2015, she lost all bearings, and only regained some balance after a trip that took her to Thailand and finally to Cambodia.

"I need to leave often to keep my feet on the ground," she confides.

Shortly after her return, she launched into creation, writing, sculpture, ink on paper, photography... "I don't remember ever having made a valid drawing under the "influence", because I need to be focused, with the window open and the sound of birds. The resilient body and nature in its pure beauty are the two sources of inspiration that irrigate her most secret works with subtle chroma. She published her first book of poetry in 2021.

Aline Khieu is the 2020 Egart laureate. 

- MG-Egart