When An Artwork Found Its Own Name
Sometimes the audience discovers the meaning before the artist does.
By Cheerted Keo
Authorship · Essay · 5 min read
I never called this artwork Rebirth.
Someone else did.
At the time, I was simply trying to find a title that felt right. Naming an artwork has always been one of the most difficult parts of the creative process. A title can shape how people approach a piece, but the wrong one can just as easily narrow its meaning. No matter what I came up with, nothing seemed to capture what this painting really was.
It wasn’t an Apsara in the traditional sense. It borrowed the graceful arm movements, the iconic crown, and the elegance of Khmer classical dance, yet it felt like something entirely different. I knew there was a deeper story within it, but I couldn’t quite put that story into words.
I left it untitled.
The Interpretation I Never Intended
As the artwork began circulating online and later appeared as prints and tattoos, an unexpected pattern emerged.
People kept telling me it reminded them of Cambodia’s past.
For many Cambodians, the striking red skeleton beneath the traditional crown immediately evoked memories of the Khmer Rouge era. Others, even without knowing much about Cambodia’s history, found themselves drawn to it. They often couldn’t explain exactly why. They simply described it as powerful.
What surprised me most was that none of this had been intentional.
I hadn’t set out to create a political statement or a historical commentary. The skeleton wasn’t meant to symbolize genocide or loss. Yet those interpretations kept appearing, independently of one another.
At first, I found that confusing.
Then I became curious.
Perhaps the artwork had begun telling a story that even I hadn’t fully understood.
Who Decides What Art Means?
That experience completely changed the way I think about one of the questions artists hear most often.
“What does it mean?”
For a long time, I felt expected to have a definitive answer, as though every symbol had been consciously planned and every brushstroke carried a fixed message.
But art rarely works that way.
Meaning doesn’t belong solely to the artist. It emerges somewhere between the artwork and the person experiencing it. Every viewer brings their own memories, culture, beliefs, and emotions. Two people can stand in front of the same painting and walk away with entirely different interpretations.
Neither is necessarily wrong.
Sometimes the audience discovers something the artist only understands later.
One Word
In early 2020, I moved to Cambodia.
Among the first things I did was print this artwork on T-shirts and give them away. It was partly an introduction, partly an experiment. I wanted to see how people in Cambodia would respond to work that had largely been created while I was still living in the Netherlands.
One day, I showed the piece to a young Cambodian woman and asked what she saw.
She studied it quietly for a moment.
Then she looked up and said,
“Rebirth.”
Just one word.
It immediately felt right.
Not because it explained every symbol in the artwork, but because it captured something I had never been able to express myself. It acknowledged Cambodia’s painful history without becoming trapped by it. It suggested resilience instead of despair. Renewal instead of destruction.
For the first time, the artwork had a name.
Letting Go
Looking back, I no longer believe artists have the final say over what their work means.
We create the work. We make thousands of decisions while bringing it into existence. But the moment it leaves the studio, it begins collecting meanings we never consciously placed there ourselves.
Every viewer adds another layer.
Sometimes those layers reveal something we couldn’t yet see.
Rebirth was never the title I planned.
Yet today, I can’t imagine calling it anything else.
