01
Art as public practice
Not private collection: made in Kep, shown in Kep, open to everyone here.
TRANSFORMING KEP’S COASTAL LANDSCAPE
WHERE ART, CULTURE, AND CONSERVATION UNITE TO INSPIRE.
What Art for Kep is
Art for Kep is a registered Cambodian non-profit organization. We work to protect Kep’s ocean, we translate the culture of this coast through art, and we support the communities who live from it. Art for Kep works through art and culture to restore our ocean and the livelihoods that depend on it. We work with artists because artists change how a place is seen, and how a place is seen determines what happens to it.
The aim is better livelihoods here, reached through culture and ocean recovery together. With Marine Conservation Cambodia we support reef restoration, seagrass and dugong habitat protection, and mariculture that gives fishing families an alternative to depleted grounds. Data establishes the case for protecting this coast. Art is what moves it.
Five pillars
The work is organised around five commitments, each answering to the same place and the same people.
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Residencies
Giving Cambodian and visiting artists time to work in direct contact with the community.
03
Kep Music and Film City
A base for performance, recording and screen work on the southern coast.
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Marine restoration
With Marine Conservation Cambodia across reef, seagrass and dugong habitat, alongside new income for fishing families.
05
S.E.A. Ocean Gallery
A permanent exhibition space devoted to this sea and the people who work it.
Together these put Kep on the map for reasons beyond pepper and crab, raise the standing of Cambodian and regional artists, advance protection of the bay, and give residents and visitors something worth coming for and worth staying for.
A quiet coast in Cambodia, with room for every artist.
Art Week
It started with 10 boats+. Today the project floats on 21 barges, with 21 artists on board.
Kep International Art Week, Edition 01, 11 to 14 December 2026.
With the 10Boats+ call, we now have 21 retired wooden fishing hulls, given up by the families who can no longer sail them, passing through the hands of artists. Some keep the hull whole and transform it. Others take it apart with the fishing family present, every plank numbered, and build something new from its timber.
In December the fleet lands on the shore at Knai Bang Chatt, Kep West and the Sailing Club, with three exhibitions, five public conversations, a kite festival and films on the roof. Twenty berths are still open.
The ocean
828 hectares proposed, and 441 of them for fishing families.
Within a potential 12,000-hectare Marine Fisheries Management Area (MFMA), 828 hectares are proposed. The largest zone in it is not the art. It is 441 hectares for bivalve cultivation, so families have an income while fish stocks recover. The five-hectare Ocean Gallery is the smallest zone, and it is there to give the other 823 hectares a public face.
Governance
A Cambodian organisation, and a line we draw in public.
Art for Kep Organisation is independent of the commercial hotels that host its residencies and venues. Knai Bang Chatt and Kep West are founding partners — they are not departments of this non-profit, and this non-profit is not a department of theirs.
The Kep West app · Coastal Cambodia — Kep
One destination.
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Join the “Kep West” circle: choose your three channels and receive 15% off your next stay, table, wellness ritual, or excursion.
