What I Though Was Khmer
One illustration became the beginning of a much longer conversation with my heritage
By Cheerted Keo
Identity · Heritage · 7 min read
“Don’t put my name on it if you publish the photo.”
I remember looking at him, slightly surprised.
He had just photographed an Apsara wearing one of my T-shirt designs. We had spent the afternoon experimenting with ideas, combining traditional Cambodian imagery with contemporary streetwear. He liked the photographs.
He just didn’t want his name attached to them.
That was the first moment I realised my illustration wasn’t being seen the way I thought it was.
The strange part was that I hadn’t changed the illustration.
Only the country had changed.
Trying To Make Something Khmer
Years before moving to Cambodia, while I was still living in the Netherlands, I became fascinated by streetwear.
Brands like Obey and RVCA caught my attention, not only because of the clothing, but because they felt like complete worlds. The graphics, the identity, the culture around them. Around that time I started thinking about creating my own brand.
That was also when the name RYYSA first appeared.
I already knew I wanted it to be connected to Cambodia.
The funny thing is that I didn’t really know what that meant.
Growing up in the Netherlands, everything I understood about Khmer culture came through my parents and the Cambodian community around me. We celebrated Khmer New Year, went to weddings and followed the traditions because they were simply part of our lives.
I participated.
I belonged.
But I had never really gone looking beneath the surface.
Around that time, people from the Cambodian community would occasionally ask me,
“Why don’t you make something Khmer?”
It sounded like a simple question.
I just didn’t know how to answer it yet.
Everything I made felt fragmentary.
One illustration.
One unfinished painting.
Another loose idea.
Nothing really belonged together.
One of those ideas became an illustration of an Apsara skeleton.
There wasn’t a profound concept behind it.
At the time I was inspired by the Spanish mural artist Aryz. His skeletons had a raw energy that felt perfectly at home within graffiti and street culture. I simply wondered what that visual language would look like if it came from Cambodia instead.
So I drew a skeleton.
Placed an Apsara crown on top.
Made it red,
partly inspired by Obey’s bold use of colour and because I wanted a strong, recognisable colour for the brand.
That was the entire idea.
I simply thought it looked cool.
Whenever I showed the illustration in the Netherlands, people responded positively to it.
I released a small edition of prints.
It later became a tattoo design, and eventually I simplified it into the logo for the streetwear brand I was building.
I often wondered why people liked it so much.
I never really found an answer.
They Didn't Talk About The Drawing
When I eventually moved to Cambodia, I naturally brought the illustration with me.
This time, people weren’t talking about the drawing.
They were talking about what might happen because of it.
“You should be careful.”
“The authorities might not appreciate this.”
“You could get yourself into trouble.”
“Some people might see this as disrespectful.”
The warnings came from different people.
One was a bar owner whose place had become a meeting place for journalists over the years. She had seen how quickly public controversies could grow. Others came from photographers, artists and friends who had lived in Cambodia much longer than I had.
Nobody was analysing the illustration itself.
Everyone was thinking about the world it existed in.
Back in the Netherlands, people mostly saw a cool streetwear graphic.
In Cambodia, people first saw an Apsara.
Not simply as a beautiful figure, but as a cultural symbol carrying generations of meaning.
For the first time, I realised people weren’t only looking at what I had drawn.
They were looking at everything the Apsara already meant before I ever touched it.
The Warnings Kept Returning
At first, I thought people were exaggerating.
After all, it was just an illustration.
But the conversations kept returning.
Different people.
Different places.
Almost the same words.
Slowly I realised they weren’t really talking about the drawing anymore.
They were talking about the context it had entered.
I never stopped using the illustration.
If anything, it became more interesting to me.
I printed the shirts.
I organized more photoshoots.
I continued exploring the idea.
What changed wasn’t the illustration.
It was the way I introduced it.
Without consciously deciding to, I found myself thinking more carefully about who I showed it to, when I showed it and how I spoke about it.
Looking back, I think this was the beginning of something much bigger.
Until then, Khmer culture had mostly been something I inherited.
This was one of the first moments I consciously started trying to understand it.
One Photograph
Around that time I became friends with a photographer who was just beginning his career.
He organised a studio shoot with models dressed in full Apsara costume.
The crown.
The jewellery.
The silk skirt.
Looking at the costumes in the studio, I asked whether one of the models would be willing to wear my T-shirt for a few photographs.
He smiled.
“I like that idea.”
The result was unlike anything I had seen before.
A traditional Apsara stood confidently in ceremonial dress, wearing a contemporary T-shirt with a skeletal reinterpretation of herself across the front.
When the shoot was over, he looked at me and said,
“Don’t put my name on it if you publish the photo.”
He didn’t need to explain why.
By then, I understood.
Looking At It Again
For a long time I thought this story was about one illustration.
Now I think it was about learning to see through someone else’s eyes.
The illustration never changed.
Only the place where people encountered it.
In the Netherlands it was mostly read as a streetwear graphic.
In Cambodia it arrived carrying the weight of a cultural symbol.
Looking back, I realise this was one of the first moments Cambodia answered a question I didn’t even know I was asking.
Not how to make Khmer-inspired work.
But what it means to make that work within Cambodia itself.
I still have the drawing.
I still like it.
But I don’t look at it the same way anymore.
