Kannetha (កន្និថា) Brown is a second-generation Khmer American artist working between Providence, Rhode Island and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Working across photography, film, writing, and oral history, her practice explores Cambodian memory through family, community, and landscape. Rooted in cultural and spiritual traditions, she approaches image-making as a form of inheritance shaped by survival, rupture, and care. Her work has been exhibited nationally and featured in The New York Times and Rolling Stone. She holds a BFA in Photography with honors from MassArt and has received support from the Artist Community Alliance, the Interlace Grant Fund, and the Rhode Island Foundation.

Like many Cambodian Americans, Brown grew up knowing relatives only through fragmented stories and photographs carried out of Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge genocide, when images were forbidden and lost. One photograph, taken by a Khmer Rouge official of her mother’s sister, shaped her understanding of photography as both a tool of violence and a vessel for remembrance. As a Khmer kat (half Cambodian) artist and child of divorce, she centers her practice on her mother’s lineage, honoring the women who carried memory across generations. Her work emphasizes presence, spiritual intuition, and research through oral history. Using analog processes, she reconnects with ancestral images and explores how photography can preserve, reflect, and transform memory.

Email: kannethasphotos@gmail.com

Full CV available upon request.