Description

A full-scale replica of the temple of Angkor Wat at the 1931 International Colonial Exposition of Paris sparked popular interest in architecture in Cambodia, which was then a French protectorate. Hugnet transformed a gallery announcement for a 1926 exhibition of drawings of Cambodian ruins into a satirical portrait by merely gluing four tiny bits of printed paper onto the image of the temple. The Surrealists staged two public protests against the Colonial Exposition; Hugnet’s collage may have been a more intimate form of commentary.