"Neighbour": Thun Dina paints the memory of the Mekong at The Gallerist
- Editorial team
- 8 hours ago
- 5 min read
From 6 to 30 August 2026, The Gallerist on Street 240 in Phnom Penh is hosting Neighbour, a solo exhibition by Cambodian painter Thun Dina. Through a new series of oil and acrylic canvases, the artist looks back on his childhood spent along the Mekong River, and on the upheavals that have since reshaped its banks and the lives of those who call them home.
Growing up on the riverbank
Thun Dina was born in Krouch Chhmar District, Tbong Khmum Province, in a bamboo house standing just a few metres from the Mekong. It was there, along those banks, that he spent his childhood watching fishermen at work and families travelling by boat, absorbing a way of life shaped by water long before he ever thought of painting it. Khmer, Cham and Vietnamese families lived side by side, connected by the river and by everyday acts of mutual support that, over time, became second nature.
Chroy Changvar, the turning point
When he later left his home province to study in Phnom Penh, those childhood memories stayed vivid. But a return visit years afterward revealed just how much had changed: riverbanks had eroded, old settlements had vanished, and entire communities had moved further inland. Houses that once stood right at the water's edge were gone, and the river's shifting course had redrawn even the landmarks he thought he knew by heart. Then, during his third year of study, an outing to Chroy Changvar with classmates and a lecturer brought it all rushing back: boats at sunset, the particular atmosphere that hangs over the water, the quiet rhythms of daily life. That moment became the starting point for Neighbour, a series built around memory, the passage of time, and the ties that endure between people and the places they inhabit.
An exhibition about the meaning of "neighbour"
Neighbour explores a way of life shaped by the Mekong, where riverside communities have long been connected through movement, exchange, and a form of coexistence learned across generations. Never a static river, it has always set its own rhythm: seasonal floods, shifting landscapes, changing routes for fishing and trade. Being a neighbour, in that context, never simply meant living side by side; it meant sharing a discipline built around an unpredictable river. Today, that process of adaptation continues, but under far more pressing conditions: accelerated erosion, unstable water levels, and new patterns of migration tied to the country's development and to climate change. Despite these upheavals, the values that have long defined these communities — generosity, mutual reliance, a sense of belonging tied less to a fixed place than to the river itself — continue to be passed down. Through vivid colour and expressive composition, Thun Dina chooses to present these communities not as fading memories, but as places still full of energy and life.
Opening night: Julie Thai's remarks
The opening reception for Neighbour took place on 6 August 2026 from 6:00 pm, in the presence of the artist. Addressing the guests, Julie Thai, founder of The Gallerist and based in Cambodia since 2002, looked back on five years of collaboration with the painter and on the origins of this new series, born, as she put it, from the artist's childhood memories long before he ever thought to paint them. She praised the way each canvas captures boats at sunset, the atmosphere of the water, and the rhythms of daily life, seeing in them an echo of the broader transformations now unfolding across the Mekong Delta. On a more personal note, she shared that she had witnessed these very changes herself, particularly around Chroy Changvar and the riverbanks, since arriving in Phnom Penh in 2002, thanking the artist for turning those memories into
"a bit of poetry, a bit of nostalgia and the feeling of belonging" that she shared with the guests that evening.
Between gallery regulars, art lovers and friends of the artist, guests took their time moving from one canvas to the next throughout the evening.
About the artist
Born in 1989 in Kampong Cham Province, Thun Dina is an independent artist whose work explores the ties between memory, place and the transformations shaping contemporary Cambodia. Drawn to drawing from an early age, he first trained in pencil drawing at the Yamada School of Arts in Phnom Penh in 2013, before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Oil Painting from the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) the following year; he is now pursuing a master's degree there. His painting, marked by vivid colour and expressive composition, blends classical oil-painting technique with influences drawn from nineteenth-century Impressionism; he often works wet-on-wet, a method that lets colours bleed into one another and gives his canvases a warm, almost vibrating texture. His work has already been shown in Cambodia and abroad, including in South Korea, Singapore and Japan, where he was selected in 2017 for the prestigious 81st Shinseisaku International Exhibition in Tokyo. After a first solo exhibition in Phnom Penh in 2022, followed by Flourish at The Gallerist in 2024, Neighbour marks a new step in a career that has spent the past decade putting Cambodia's rural memory in dialogue with the rapid pace of change in its capital.
The Gallerist, a space for Cambodian contemporary art
Located on Street 240, one of the busiest thoroughfares in downtown Phnom Penh, The Gallerist is a contemporary art gallery founded by French national Julie Thai, who has lived in Cambodia since 2002. Designed as a clean, understated space meant to showcase the artists' work rather than compete with it, the gallery set out to put Cambodia's art scene in dialogue with a local and international audience, bringing together internationally recognised names alongside a new generation of painters and visual artists. Through its programme of exhibitions, The Gallerist has established itself as one of the addresses that matter on the capital's cultural map, balancing a sense of heritage with close attention to a Cambodian art scene firmly turned toward the present.
Neighbour, by Thun Dina — 6 to 30 August 2026, The Gallerist, 15/17 Street 240, Phnom Penh.
Official website: thegallerist.asia
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