ABOUT

Adana is a French-Cambodian painter, filmmaker, and activist–artivist whose work fuses artistic expression with psychological inquiry and social advocacy.

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She was raised in Cambodia by a human rights activist deeply engaged in the fight against sex trafficking in Southeast Asia. Growing up alongside children and women who were victims of sexual exploitation made her acutely aware, from an early age, of social injustice and political violence. As a teenager, she began engaging in activism, visiting Phnom Penh’s red-light districts and witnessing firsthand the living conditions and systemic oppression faced by women.

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Shaped by her experiences in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, and deeply sensitized to issues of human rights and sociology, Adana enthusiastically enrolled in a Bachelor’s degree in Law and Political Science at a French university.

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At the age of 21, she abruptly interrupted her studies following the diagnosis of lymphoma. Faced with illness, she embarked on an intense journey of resilience, cultivating emotional intelligence, deep empathy, and a renewed connection with nature. During chemotherapy, she turned to painting as a means of survival and expression, transforming physical pain into visual language. Painting became her embodied form of communication—an intimate process through which she confronted fear, suffering, and transformation.

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Adana officially launched her artistic career with her first painting exhibition in New York in 2019. This was followed by thirteen exhibitions across Paris, Brussels, Bangkok, Sydney, and Phnom Penh.

She has actively participated in charity auctions and numerous exhibitions where proceeds from her artwork were donated to local NGOs. One major initiative raised over USD 150,000, benefiting Cambodian organizations focused on psycho-social support and mental health.

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Her work explores not only her experience with cancer, but also psychological rumination, existential dissonance, and the inner conflict of growing up between two cultures—Cambodian and French. This dissonance is intertwined with the trauma of Cambodia’s 1997 coup d’état: the crackle of automatic weapons, mortar explosions, the smell of gunpowder, the terror reflected in her mother’s eyes, and the transgenerational trauma born of more than four decades of war. Her work interrogates psycho-social consequences of the Khmer Rouge regime, the culture of silence, and a society she describes in “psychological glaciation.”

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Driven by a desire for deeper self-understanding, Adana pursued more than five years of psychoanalysis and later followed a degree in psychotherapy.

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In 2024, after more than a year of artistic maturation in Montpellier and Paris, she relocated to Hong Kong. Alongside continuing her career as a painter, she founded Adana Prod, a film production company and began writing, directing, and producing her own films across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

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In 2025, Adana was diagnosed with breast cancer, her second encounter with the disease. Still in recovery, she is currently developing a new interdisciplinary project that bridges visual art, film, social issues.

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Awards, Nominations, and Recognition

1. Shortlisted for the Women of the Future Awards South East Asia in the category of Art and Culture.

2. Nominated as one of Asia 21 Young Leaders - 2024

3. Semi-Finaliste for Inspiring Asia 2025 - film festival in Singapore, 2025