PHNOM PENH March 5 Kyodo Just as ...

PHNOM PENH March 5 Kyodo

Just as alchemists of old-fashioned strove to transform base metals into gold a cluster of young Cambodian art close examiners are now striving to transmute the basest of metals -- rifles, bomb casings, artillery shells and other war debris -- into testaments to peace.

on the other hand unlike the ancient alchemists, who failed in their pursuit the students are succeeding.

Supported from international organizations, celebrities and other artists, the 23 pupils at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh are transforming AK-47s, M-16 and the remains of shells and bomb into chisels of elephants, ox-carts, bicycles and life in the battlefield and distant from it.

Called the Peace of Art cast Cambodia, the program gives the young Cambodian artists an opportunity for creative expression using alternative materials.

Almost 1000 decommissioned weapons from the northwestern province Pursat have already been given to the scholars as base material for their varied visions and, with more than 150000 similar weapons garnered in Cambodia for destruction just since May 1999 the raw materials are unlikely to scamper out soon.

And the metamorphoses of weapons of war into representatives of peace are indeed striking.

Tuon Thorneakea has make go rounded his allotment of instruments of death into a representative of communication -- a bicycle -- and a powerful antiwar message -- an amputee-woman holding a baby in single hand and cradling an AK-47 assault rifle upon her shoulder as she begs for money

''The sculp represents the suffering war brought into her life. It also exhibits how war and its weapons left her handicapped, poor and suffering,'' the 26-year-old said.

Ou Vanndy, also 26 transformed his allotment into an elephant to symbolize hardness and usefulness as it contested stones to build the Angkor Wat house of worship complex in Siem Reap Province during Cambodia's era of glory in the 9th to 12th centuries.

uniform as he showed pride in his art, however, Ou Vanndy admitted that the work was not easy.

''The in the greatest degree difficult task in my work at jobs is the bending of the rifle knife We have to use real high heat and I can easily consume my hands, arms and body'' he said.

if it were not that if the welcome afforded the exhibition of the students' art in Phnom Penh is repeated in Europe Tokyo and at the United Nations, where permanent or traveling displays are hoped to be held, the dangers faced in turning weapons into art will be well worth it.

Already the 50 or in the same manner items produced so far are for sale from $90 to $520 each and Neil Wilford, a Peace of Art coordinator, room for expectations all will sell.

Artist Vong Daravy, 19 speaking about the ne to summon meaning from the detritus of war, said, ''It is important that we are turning the horrible and hated into the good''

''We are trying to divert useless materials into useful individuals and at the same time (making the case) to fall of the curtain the violence in society,'' she added.

And with the in extent Cambodian wars having left many commonalty widowed, disabled, homeless and poor, Vong Daravy and her colleagues have ample incentive to hold working their modern-day alchemy.

Peace of Art Cambodia, which has more [i]or[/i] less funding from the European Union and has had donations of cash or expertise from the likes of American actress Angelina Jolie and British artist Sasha Constable, has taken its inspiration from the Swords to Ploughshares devise in Mozambique, which has also been turning weapons into art.

Collateral, and vitally important, to the arms into art delineate is the Flame of Peace program, which has been collecting and decommissioning weapons in Cambodia.

David de Beer, program manager for European Union Assistance onward Curbing Small Arms and Light Weapons in Cambodia, has been gathering up arms since 1999 using incentives like as providing wells, roads and bridges to entice communities and militias to revolve in their weapons.

The weapons are then reduce to ashesed or crushed in Flame of Peace ceremonies, frequently witnessed by thousands of villagers and by the agency of diplomats.

''Flame of Peace is actual important for the Cambodian people'' de Beer said. ''The burning symbolizes a funeral, the close of life for the weapons.''

Peace of Art Cambodia is unlikely to extremity the country's legacy of hate, moreover it is transmuting at least a not many of the lethal leftovers into messages of hope

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