HONG KONG, China (CNN)  -- Bamboo, woven into the shape of human stomachs. Red, sky blue and orange pencil shavings glued onto a large canvas form a woman's traditional hair clip. A collage of magazine clippings, drawings and found materials depict Cambodia's tumultuous modern history.

Leang Seckon's "Prison Guard" depicts Duch, who is facing a genocide tribunal starting Tuesday.

These are a few of the offerings on hand in Hong Kong at one of the first large international exhibitions of artists from Cambodia. The work by 14 artists varies in practice-- video, photography, collage, wood shavings, paper, bamboo and painting-- as well as in themes, from reflecting on the Southeast Asian nation's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to the emerging modern Cambodia, with traffic lights and all.

"Every artist in this show is referencing ancient tradition and recent history," said Phnom Penh-based curator Erin Gleeson, noting the wall-size depiction in folded paper of the serpent Naga (which in Cambodian culture represents the people's mythical birth) to a collage of 20th-century Cambodia and its six different regime changes.

"The show is looking at the present -- 'Forever Until Now' is the title -- and it is this lineage of the past, you see that in the show, and then you see artists that arrive at the present," she added.

The show opens Friday and runs through March 22 at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. Gallery owner and director Katie de Tilly said she believed it was important the artists get international exposure.

" ... it's really at the beginning of their art emergence. Obviously, they've had a very hard history," she said. "This is really the beginning of contemporary Cambodians who are expressing very original ideas in their artworks and I think that that's what makes it very unique and to show to the rest of the world."

Cambodia, which lost an estimated one-quarter of its population or at least 1.7 million people -- including an estimated 90 percent of its artists -- under the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, has a small but growing artistic community: there are some 50 practicing artists out of its 14 million people, Gleeson said.

The genocide and ensuing war, which only ended in the last decade or so, stifled the development of the arts in one of the world's poorest countries.

"The legacy of that is now in every facet of a developing society," said Gleeson, who noted the country had no art books when she arrived in 2002 on a fellowship to teach art history. "There's an absence of infrastructure for them, there's an absence of materials, there is no art store. ... they are quite inventive about mixing materials to make them of a higher quality or last longer, but in many cases they don't know archival techniques."

The harsh weather conditions -- a dusty, hot season and a rainy monsoon -- add to the trying work conditions.

"Everything's against them," she added. "Their parents in many cases are coming from a really disadvantaged background, as the majority of the country is economically."

Some of the art included in the show looks at the Cambodia of today, such as Leang Seckon's "Three Greens" -- an acrylic painting showing children in school uniform crossing a road with a yellow light, red light and three green lights, along with cows and roosters. The piece shows the changes in a country that recently got stop lights, with animals, people and traffic mingling on the main roads of the capital.

Sopheap Pich, a Cambodian-American whose family migrated to the U.S. in 1984, works with bamboo and rattan -- materials often used in Cambodian traditional farming and crafts -- to make sculptures.

His work, "Cycle 2," is the joining of the stomachs of an infant and an elderly person that for him brought up ideas of Cambodian traditional village life.

"You belong to each other, you help each other out," he said. "But also, if you look at the
How many artists are now practicing their craft in the country? What was stunted the arts in Cambodia? What country is associated with the Khmer Rouge? How many artists had their work displayed? How many artists displayed their work? What number of artists practice their craft in Southeast Asia? What former Khmer Rouge leader is depicted? Number of artists featured in the event? Number of artist practicing their craft in the Southeast Asian country?
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question: How many artists are now practicing their craft in the country?, answer: 14 | question: What was stunted the arts in Cambodia?, answer: the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, | question: What country is associated with the Khmer Rouge?, answer: Cambodia, | question: How many artists had their work displayed?, answer: 14 | question: How many artists displayed their work?, answer: 14 | question: What number of artists practice their craft in Southeast Asia?, answer: 14 | question: What former Khmer Rouge leader is depicted?, answer: Duch, | question: Number of artists featured in the event?, answer: 14 | question: Number of artist practicing their craft in the Southeast Asian country?, answer: 14