Lanica Angpak
Lanica Angpak is a second generation Khmer American living in Philadelphia. She is a Cambodian Classical and Folk Dance artist and activist. Lanica dedicates her time to ensuring that young people have access to the opportunities, resources, and information to become impactful change-makers. She is devoted to using her art form as a tool of activism for her community and neighboring communities. Lanica is invested in co-building and co-creating sustainable and accessible relationships across generations and communities of color. She believes in the importance of knowing, understanding, and using history as a means of shaping the future. Lanica received the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award (2015) and Arts & Change Grant (2019). She founded and directs Cambodian American Girls Empowering, a local nonprofit dance organization that uses art as a form of activism. Currently, she works for the City of Philadelphia and serves as a commissioner for Governor Tom Wolf’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs.
Awarded Grants
2019
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Lanica’s art for social change project will bring together Cambodian Americans from the Philadelphia metropolitan area through photography. Lanica will recreate ancient art, historical paintings, and family relics through photography to recapture their almost completely lost art, culture, and history. After more than thirty years of resettlement, the Cambodian diaspora is still healing, and this work will provide Cambodian Americans of all generations, immigrant status, education levels opportunities to engage in conversations centered around identity and
Partner
2015
Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)
Related grantees
Overview
Since she was 7 years old, Lanica has performed Cambodian classical court dance in the Greater Philadelphia region. She has taught Cambodian classical dance on a volunteer basis for five years and developed programming that connects this form of dance with identity and community. Lanica is dedicated to youth development and Cambodian American empowerment by creating safe havens for creative expression and preserving and reclaiming culture and traditions, as well as keeping it relevant.
