Neighbour
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A Solo Exhibition by Thun Dina
Opening night: August 6, 2026 Exhibition: August 7–31, 2026
The Gallerist, Phnom Penh
The Gallerist is pleased to present Neighbour, a solo exhibition by Cambodian contemporary artist Thun Dina.
Featuring a new series of acrylic and oil paintings, the exhibition draws from the artist’s childhood memories of life along the Mekong River. Through vivid colours, expressive compositions, and scenes inspired by riverside communities, Dina reflects on memory, coexistence, displacement, and the transformations reshaping Cambodia’s cultural and natural landscapes.
Guests are warmly invited to attend the opening night in the presence of the artist, discover his latest collection, and engage with the stories behind the works.
A Life Along the River
Thun Dina was born in 1989 in Krouch Chhmar District, in what is now Tbong Khmum Province, and grew up in a bamboo house near the Mekong River.
Along its banks, he watched people fish, travel by boat, trade, gather, and move through the rhythms of everyday life. Khmer, Cham, and Vietnamese families lived side by side, connected by the water and by daily gestures of generosity, cooperation, and coexistence.
These early experiences shaped Dina long before he imagined becoming an artist.
When he later moved to Phnom Penh to study, the memories of his childhood remained vivid. Yet when he returned years later, he discovered a landscape profoundly changed. Riverbanks had eroded, familiar settlements had disappeared, and communities had been forced to move. Houses once standing close to the water were gone, while old landmarks and gathering places had been altered by the river’s shifting course.
The place preserved in his memory no longer fully matched the place before him.
These transformations extend beyond personal loss. They echo broader changes unfolding across the Mekong region, where erosion, climate change, urban development, migration, and human intervention continue to reshape landscapes and ways of life.
The Beginning of Neighbour
During his third year of study, Dina visited Chroy Changvar with classmates and a lecturer.
The boats at sunset, the atmosphere along the water, and the familiar rhythms of riverside life brought back the world of his childhood. The visit revived a sense of community and belonging that he believed had been lost.
That moment became the starting point for Neighbour.
The collection emerged from memory, the passing of time, the loss of childhood places, and the enduring ties between people and the landscapes that shape them.
Exhibition Concept
Neighbour explores a way of life shaped by the Mekong River, where communities have long been connected through movement, exchange, and everyday acts of coexistence.
For generations, the river has provided food, transport, trade, and cultural exchange. Yet it has never been static. Seasonal shifts, changing water levels, erosion, and new patterns of settlement have always required adaptation.
In this context, neighbourliness is more than physical proximity. It is a shared way of living with an unpredictable river.
Today, that process of adaptation continues under new and increasingly urgent conditions. As Cambodia develops and the region responds to environmental change, riverside communities must navigate shifting water levels, disappearing land, changing livelihoods, migration, and relocation.
Despite these pressures, communities continue to carry forward the values that have long sustained them: generosity, mutual reliance, shared memory, and a sense of belonging connected not only to a fixed place, but to the river itself.
Colour, Memory and Transformation
Executed in acrylic and oil on canvas, Thun Dina’s paintings capture communities in transition through luminous colours and emotionally charged compositions.
Boats drift across vibrant waters. Figures gather along the shore. Everyday activities become carriers of memory and identity.
Dina does not present these communities as fading remnants of the past. Instead, he portrays them as living places of energy, resilience, connection, and possibility.
His use of colour is central to this vision. Bright tones bring warmth and hope to scenes marked by change, reflecting both the vitality of contemporary Cambodian life and the artist’s own journey from rural childhood to urban experience.
Through this collection, Dina invites viewers to reconsider the meaning of the word “neighbour.”
What truly binds us to a place?
Is it the landscape itself, a shared way of life, or the collective memories that continue to shape who we are?
About Thun Dina
Born in 1989, Thun Dina is an independent Cambodian artist whose work explores the relationship between memory, place, identity, and the transformations shaping contemporary Cambodia.
Drawing on his childhood along the Mekong River and his later experience adapting to life in Phnom Penh, Dina reflects on the tension between rural traditions and rapid urban change.
He developed a passion for art at an early age, using drawing and painting to preserve memories of his childhood. In 2013, he completed a course in pencil drawing techniques at the Yamada School of Arts in Phnom Penh. The following year, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Oil Painting from the Royal University of Fine Arts. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in painting.
Dina’s work is inspired by his surroundings and by the people and places that embody Cambodia’s evolving social landscape. His paintings are known for their vivid colours, expressive compositions, and emotionally resonant textures.
Combining traditional oil-painting techniques with influences from nineteenth-century Impressionism, he frequently applies colours directly beside one another on the canvas and uses wet-on-wet techniques to create soft transitions, warmth, depth, and movement.
His work has been exhibited in Cambodia and internationally, including in South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. In 2017, his paintings were selected for the 81st Shinseisaku Exhibition in Tokyo, an important milestone in his artistic career.
Through his practice, Thun Dina offers a sensitive portrait of a society in transition, balancing intimate memory with broader reflections on community, displacement, identity, and belonging.
