ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the manipulation of artefacts' biographies: the manufacture of high-quality replicas of Khmer stone sculptures for export, and the way they are provided with new identities, namely those of authentic or original artefacts and are then exported to Thailand. In an elegant antiquities shop in the O. P. Place Shopping Centre, Bangkok, Khmer stone statues dating back to Angkor time and beyond were stylishly displayed and discretely illuminated by spotlights when we revisited it in November 2013. Provenance, or rather the testimony of a flawless history of ownership, largely determines the fate of an artefact. The twisted biography turns legally and illegally exported objects, replicas, and unlawfully exported, original artefacts which are the result of looting and theft into whitewashed commodities with a clean passport of provenance so that they can be freely moved sold and bought on the international art market.
