Signs of better times in Cambodia

John Thornton/DAILY NEWS STAFF
A Cambodian store sign brought to the U.S. by Joel Montague.

John Thornton/DAILY NEWS STAFF
A Cambodian store sign for a "coining" procedure, a massage with a coin, brought to the states by Joel Montague is on display at the Wellesley Free Library.

John Thornton/DAILY NEWS STAFF
Joel Montague with several Cambodian store signs on display at the Wellesley Free Library,

Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2009.

MetroWest Daily News, MA
By Chris Bergeron/DAILY NEWS STAFF

WELLESLEY — After decades of civil war, genocide and invasion wracked Cambodia, frequent expatriate Joel Montague first noticed life returning to normal in the humble signs merchants hung on their shops.

Working in rural health programs in the early 1990s, the world-traveling Wellesley resident saw handcrafted signs advertising haircuts and goat soup, pool tables and marriage arrangers sprouting like mushrooms throughout the troubled Southeast Asian nation.

"These are like the old tavern signs in America that have had their day and have become passe," said Montague. "First of all, it's advertising. But it's also an art form that shows us something about a country getting back on its feet."

Montague's fascinating signs of Cambodia's times can now be seen at the Wellesley Free Library.

Visitors can view 25 shop signs that cast a revealing light on the resurgence of Cambodian society in the 1990s. They are featured in "Cambodian Business Signs," an offbeat and engaging exhibit in the Wakelin Room through the end of the month.

Montague said ordinary shop signs virtually disappeared from Cambodia in the 1970s during the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge. Experts estimate the communist dictatorship led by Pol Pot killed about 1.5 million people or 20 percent of Cambodia's population from 1975 to 1979.

Angered by recurring border violations, neighboring Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, drove the Khmer Rouge into hiding and occupied the country through 1989.

"Under the Khmer Rouge, there was no private sector. So there were no individually owned shops that needed signs," said Montague. "When the Vietnamese occupied the country, they were into total socialization and government control."

But after the Vietnamese left, Montague said an entrepreneurial market began and people started putting up shop signs once again.

Working in Cambodia after the Vietnamese left, Montague observed "worker artists" who'd been apprentice painters and merchants creating generally two-sided signs in larger towns and cities to advertise basic consumer goods and services. He said shops in villages didn't need signs because everyone knew what was available without spending money on advertising.

Montague hopes visitors will see a sort of innocent charm in the signs which combine bright, bold images with direct advertising statements.

In an advertisement for patent medicine, a respected elder wearing yellow robes gives a potion to a healthy young couple. Montague believes potential buyers would know a snake, monkey and rabbit by the elder's feet are ingredients in the medicine.

An especially sophisticated sign uses Khmer, Chinese and English to advertise "Goat soup with Chinese ingredients for more than (strength)."

And Montague said the inclusion of foreign products, however simple, revealed a growing interest in imported consumer goods believed to be superior to local products.

Looking as if ripped from the pages of Vogue, an advertisement for a local spa shows a stylish woman chatting on an oversized cell phone while sitting in an outdated steam cabinet.

The artists who painted the signs on wood, tin, leather and canvas were far more interested in getting the message across than adhering to the laws of perspective or proportion.

Another spa advertisement shows a smiling lady with blue eyeshadow submerging her body in what resembles a bubble bath but fills a vessel no larger than a sink.

In a double-faced sign advertising health treatments, a woman uses a coin to scrape medicinal oil down the chest of a giant man twice her size.



Montague has spent much of his last 50 years living and working overseas, often in hot spots like Egypt, Iran, Cambodia and, recently, Afghanistan.

A New York native, he earned a degree in political science from Oberlin College and, after military service, earned a graduate degree from the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University.

Montague spent 10 years working for CARE in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, where he met and married his wife, Shahnaz Montague, a doctor who practices internal medicine in Framingham. They have two adult children.

In recent decades, he has worked abroad as a family health adviser in Cambodia, Afghanistan and other exotic locales. Montague is presently board chairman of a Cambodian nonprofit agency founded by The Global Fund which promotes malaria education in Cambodian schools. Last year, a memoir of French Indochina, "The Colonial Good Life," co-authored by Montague and Michael Vann was published by White Lotus Press.

Nancy Hart, a portrait artist visiting from Belmont, described the signs as "just amazing."

"I love the idea that ordinary people can paint whether they've gone to art school or not," she said. "Here (in America) you're on your own or have to work in Starbucks."

Montague's signs offer the unadorned immediacy of the best folk art.

Viewers with just the faintest awareness of modern Cambodian history will recognize familiar human aspirations painted on these signs from the other side of the world.

Part history lesson, part art show, Montague's exhibit morphs into an informative travelogue through an exotic country with a tortured past.

Hardcore tourists always claim they want to "get off the beaten path" when traveling overseas.

Montague has brought the beaten path through Cambodian life into the library's Wakelin Room where you'll encounter everyday sights you'd never see in a tour group.