Adana Mam Legros is a 25-year-old Franco-Cambodian artist and activist. She is the Co-founder and president of Generation C.
Daughter of Somaly Mam, an international icon of women's rights and controversial personality fighting sexual slavery of children in Southeast Asia, and Pierre Legros, trained parasitologist and specialist in human trafficking.
Adana spent her childhood in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, with women and children survivors of sexual exploitation. The activism of her parents quickly rubs off on her education and pushes her to participate in her parents' association at all levels: from social work to international travel for conferences. She plays a role in fundraising and accustoms herself to speech.
This environment makes it prematurely aware of the problems of the contemporary world. Revolted by social injustices and their worldwide evolutions, she flies to Europe to start studying law and political science in Nice in order to acquire the necessary tools to get into the fight. This momentum, however, is abruptly interrupted by the discovery of cancer two years ago, which imposes severe physical and psychological suffering. She uses meditation to confront her loneliness and became passionate about neuro-politics, neuroscience, genetics, psychology, philosophy, and political science.
According to her, this period allows her to develop a great capacity for resilience and made a warrior out of her. After her treatment, she escapes to New York where her artistic passion begins. Adana works a year before inaugurating her first exhibition, '' My RenaiSense '', in June 2018 in Manhattan.
Touching the first audience, she returns the entire sale of her paintings to "Less Cancer" an American foundation. Immersed in the New York world, Adana concretizes her abstract style, centered on her self-analysis.
She meets personalities, notably Susan Sarandon, who will form the activist and feminist she is. The same year, in a desire for adventure and surpassing herself, she crossed the Mediterranean and toured the African coast with her father on a sailboat for two months. This isolation experience leads him to face extreme conditions. Measuring herself against the beauty and strength of nature, Adana finds a key moment in her transcendence.
In search of reconciliation between roots and identity, she returned to Cambodia in early 2019 where she has been actively involved in education and advocacy through multiple conferences and workshops. Since then, her artwork has been exhibited in different parts of the world such as Brussels, Paris, Sydney, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap.
Setting up think tanks in Phnom Penh, particularly on the social and political changes needed to create for a global situation in a state of emergency. For Adana, three years of meditation have developed in her a particular sensitivity on topics such as consciousness, personal and collective ethics, empathy, and, more generally, the evolution of the species Homo Sapiens. Her pictorial works stem from her questioning and her revolts.