Biografia

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 solo exhibitions include Rubber Man, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); Human Nature, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Singapore (2014); and Newspaper Man, SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh (2012). His group exhibitions include The Khmer Rouge and the consequences. Documentation as artistic memory work, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin (2015), A Time For Dreams, IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (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), and Poetic Politic, Kadist Foundation, San Francisco (2012).

Khvay is currently a resident at Bethenian Kunstlerhaus, Berlin (2014-2015). In 2015, he is nominated for the AIMIA AGO Photography Prize Long List, Canada; the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong; and Prudential Eye Awards Best Emerging Artist in Asia Using Photography, Singapore.