Chhon Dina, Artist

Chhon Dina was born in 1984 in Phnom Penh, but at the age of ten her family moved to Poipet to join her father, who was a policeman there. It was a rather dull place with little to do. She did not attend school and had very few friends. Poipet was heavily contaminated with landmines. She clearly remembers being very frightened by seeing a woman go to a place which people said was dangerous and hearing an explosion a short while later.

She eventually returned to Phnom Penh, where she first saw drawings made by a cousin and was very impressed. She and some friends began to make small sculptures from clay they took from the boeung (swampy lake), and a man teaching children at a local orphanage provided her with her first opportunity to use colors. He became her art teacher for several years.

In 2004, she had her first group exhibition in Phnom Penh, and she has also exhibited in Siem Reap and Paris. She has several years’ experience teaching art to children in orphanages, and has painted murals in most of them. She loves the arts, especially sculpture, and enjoys playing guitar in her free time.