Khvay Samnang

Khvay Samnang was born in 1982 in Svay Rieng, Cambodia, and lives and works in Phnom Penh. His multidisciplinary practice spans performance, photography, video, installation, and sculpture.
Prompted by instinct and hearsay, direct experience and media sources, Khvay follows stories he believes require intervention. With symbolic and intentionally futile gestures, he offers new interpretations of history and contentious current affairs that resist the polarizing lan­guage known to media and legal reports.
Khvay's exhibitions include “The Khmer Rouge and the consequences. Documentation as artistic memory work,” Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2015), “A Time For Dreams,” IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), “Human Nature,” Tomio Koyama, Singapore (2014), “If The World Changed,” 4th Singapore Biennale (2014), “Everyday Life,” 4th Asian Art Biennale, Taipei Fine Art Museum (2013), “Sights and Sounds: Global Video Art,” The Jewish Museum, NYC (2013), “Phnom Penh: Rescue Archaeology,” ifa, Berlin and Stuttgart (2013), “Newspaper Man,” SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh (2012), and “Poetic Politic,” Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2012).
In 2015, Khvay was nominated for the AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize, Canada, and Prudential Eye Awards Best Emerging Artist in Asia Using Photography, Singapore; he was a finalist for the 2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize.