Cycle of Life: Tith Kanitha’s Long-Awaited Return to the Cambodian Art Scene

SNA Arts Management is delighted to present Cycle of Life, the new solo exhibition by Tith Kanitha, a leading figure in contemporary Cambodian art.

This event marks the artist’s long-awaited return to her homeland, eight years after her last solo exhibition in Cambodia. By bringing together a body of emblematic works, Cycle of Life offers an intimate dialogue between past and present, evolution and continuity, the individual and the collective.

A Sensitive and Organic Retrospective

From 2007 to 2025, Tith Kanitha has shaped a singular body of work at the intersection of personal memory and sociopolitical reflection. Trained within the dynamic atmosphere of the post–Khmer Rouge art scene, her practice draws its strength from a constant questioning of human fragility and self-reconstruction. Through video, sculpture, and installation, she explores the materiality of the body and emotions, transforming ordinary objects—wire, fabric, reclaimed metal—into poetic metaphors of the cycle of life and renewal.

In this new exhibition, SNA Arts Management presents an immersive journey in which each installation becomes a fragment of history, a cell of vital energy. Cycle of Life traces the path of a creative journey begun in the late 2000s, enriched by international residencies and collaborations, notably at the Singapore Biennale (2013) and the Spring Workshop in Hong Kong (2015).

Between Vulnerability and Resistance

Kanitha’s works challenge the boundaries between art and craft, femininity and resistance. Inspired by Khmer culture and the intimate realities of everyday Cambodian life, she interrogates the dynamics of gender, memory, and social transformation.

According to several critics and researchers, her visual language “weaves subtle connections between the personal and the political, between the gentleness of gesture and the violence of history.”

The guiding thread of the exhibition—the metaphor of the “cycle”—evokes the seasons of life and the successive rebirths of an artist who has never ceased to experiment. Cycle of Life thus becomes a space for breathing and visual meditation, where viewers are invited to contemplate the transformation of material… and of the soul.

An Artistic Event Not to Be Missed

The opening of Cycle of Life will take place on Friday, January 16, 2026, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the SNA Arts Management gallery in Phnom Penh. The event promises a generous and vibrant encounter between the artist, the public, and key figures of the regional contemporary art scene.

For SNA Arts Management, this exhibition embodies both a return to roots and a projection toward the future of Cambodian art, in a momen…