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Entering the grounds of The Steel Yard one is met with towering iron sculptures and the clanging sound of hammers pounding metal. Inside the massive building, professional artists create industrial art, fabricating objects in wood or metal using a variety of hand, power and machine tools.

Alex Tum has been welding and making industrial artwork for two years now. The 23-year-old has just completed his final semester of the B.F.A. in studio art program at ������˾��, with concentrations in sculpture and digital media. During his last semester, he also began working in residence at The Steel Yard and will continue there until August 2025.

“I heard about this residency from my sculpture professor, Bill Martin,” Tum says. Tum worked on his departmental honors project at The Steel Yard and at his studio at ������˾��. His project is called “Motherland.” 

“Motherland” is a series of sculptures that explore the history of the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for one of the worst mass genocides of the 20th century.

“As an artist, you have a tendency to look at where you came from,” Tum says. “Members of my family are survivors of the Cambodian genocide. My artwork serves as both a memorization and examination of the past.”

During their reign of terror, the Khmer tortured and executed hundreds of thousands of educated middle-class Cambodians; they forced onto communal farms hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians, many of whom died from disease, starvation or exhaustion; and they attempted to exterminate the Vietnamese and the Cham Muslims.

Growing up, Tum says, “The genocide was always a mysterious topic. I would hear disjointed retellings of experiences, but it wasn’t something I really began to explore and ask questions about until my time at ������˾��.”

Fabricated primarily from wood and steel, Tum’s sculptures are a combination of body parts and the weapons that were used by the Khmer.

“I take the body part and the weapon and abstract them,” he says. “The reconfiguration of these symbols speak to the psychological aspects of my work: alienation, displacement and disillusionment.”

When hung from the ceiling, Tum’s pieces appear like falling missiles or floating, non-living bodies. They have a post-apocalyptic, alien quality to them.

“I’m not really trying to teach anybody anything or have this be didactic or moralistic. For me, it’s a mirror of my thoughts. It’s my thoughts in 3-D.”

“Motherland” also references American and Cambodian attitudes toward this atrocity. Tum notes that the American attitude has been “marked by glorification and broad ignorance of overseas atrocities,” and the Cambodian attitude is “characterized by cycles of repression in response to genocide.”

Pieces from “Motherland” will be part of The Steel Yard Residents Group Show at the WaterFire Arts Center on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. Tum’s pieces will also be displayed in the Senior Show at ������˾��’s Bannister Gallery Spring Semester 2025.

Looking back on his residency, Tum says what he has enjoyed most is community.

“I think art school teaches you a lot about fabricating and getting those foundational skills,” he says, noting, “������˾��’s art professors are super one-on-one and really care about their students in a way that I’ve found is exceptionally rare for an art school.” 

“But here [at The Steel Yard] it’s really about community and having people to talk to and bounce ideas off of. I would say this residency is teaching me more about how to be an artist outside of school and to connect with other artists,” he says. “������˾�� has definitely been very beneficial to my growth as an artist, but it was good to come here and get some outside perspective and to hear some other voices.”

Video of Alex Tum: 

For more information about ������˾��’s studio art program, visit Art Studio: Studio Art B.A., B.F.A.