User:Dchiqq/DanyPen

Dany Pen (Born. 22 September 1986) is a photographic-installation artist.

Life
Pen was born in Toronto, Canada to Cambodian parents who had immigrated to Canada as refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge Holocaust of the 1970's. Pen grew up in the community of Regent Park, Canada’s oldest and largest housing project. "Invisible City", a film directed by Hubert Davis (who was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming), takes us on an in-depth look at the community of Regent Park, Toronto.

Pen attended the Ontario College of Art and Design, 2004, graduating from the Sculpture and Installation Program with a B.F.A Degree. She currently lives and works in Bermuda.

Work
"As an artist I have always been interested in how history is attached to identity," -Dany Pen, Royal Gazette

Pen's installations are a combination of digital medias, photography and organic materials

Emphasizing on how memory and history are preserved, salvaged and revived, Dany Pen utilizes the Cambodian culture, focusing specifically on the history of the Cambodian holocaust(2). Members of her family were part of an estimated two million Cambodians who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in waves of torture, murder and famine throughout the 1970s (3).

Quotations
"As a child, I could never understand why my mother seemed to know all the Cambodians in Canada," said Ms Pen. "She would always say she met them in 'the camp. For a long time I thought she meant a fun summer camp."- Dany Pen, Royal Gazette News (4)

"Many people in my generation feel an automatic duty to carry on the legacy of this culture that at the time was almost completely eradicated," she said. "We are in a position to excavate and recover the culture with very little means." -Dany Pen, Royal Gazette (5)

"...her attempt to reconstruct the appearance and bring into focus these unknown individuals. In the end her achievements are completely out-of-focus portraits. These unknown relatives are as mysterious as the names we find on genealogical charts. She was told that these individuals had helped her family escape the genocide that took place in Cambodia a few decades ago, but beyond that, she has little knowledge of who they were. Yet, she recognises an indebtedness to them, of her very existence"-Art Critic Charles Zuill (6)

Exhibitions
(2010)- "Deja Vu 1965" Bermuda Society of Arts: Studio A & B (2010)- Bermuda Society of Arts: Onions Gallery "Photographic Exhibition" (2010)- XPACE "Intangible" (2010)- OCAD Gradex Show (2010)- Board Of Directors "Preservation and Erasures" (2010)- SHAMBA "Art for Africa" (2009)- Switch Contemporary Gallery (2008)-85 Bleeker Gallery "Art Attack" (2008)- Canadian National Exhibition Butter Sculpting (2007)- Whodunnit Exhibition (2006)- Transit Space "Global Village"

Awards
(2010)- Bermuda Society of Arts "Honorable Mention" in the "34th Annual BSOA Photographic Exhibition" (2010)- Ontario College of Art and Design-Sculpture and Installation Faculty Chair Award (2008)- Ontario College of Art and Design Award of Recognition (2000)- Honderich Award from University of Toronto