Ravy Puth: The Illustrator Restoring Memory to Quebec's Khmer Diaspora

Born in Montreal to Chinese-Cambodian parents who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, Ravy Puth has turned illustration into a tool for research and resistance. Between award-winning children's books, campaigns against anti-Asian racism and a graphic novel in progress on the hidden history of Cambodians in Quebec, she works to bring back a memory the genocide tried to erase.

Ravy Puth, illustrator and researcher

A Chinese-Cambodian Childhood in Montreal, in the Genocide's Shadow

Ravy Puth was born in Montreal in the years following the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge, to Cambodian parents of Teochew Chinese descent. Like many children of the diaspora, she grew up with a family history that was largely left unspoken: her parents are among the survivors of a dictatorship that taught an entire generation to stay quiet in order to avoid reprisals.

The illustrator now names that culture of silence explicitly: second-generation Cambodians like her were born to parents traumatized by a political dictatorship, raised not to make waves. It is precisely that silenced memory her artistic and academic work sets out to bring back to the surface.

From Geography to Engaged Illustration

Ravy Puth's path did not follow a conventional artistic trajectory. After a college diploma in fine arts, she earned a bachelor's degree in geography from the Université du Québec à Montréal, with research on natural hazard risk management in the Carpathian Mountains and a thesis on land eviction in Cambodia. It was only in 2017 that she began working as an independent illustrator, before completing a master's degree in media studies at Concordia University in 2024.

Her master's research-creation project uses illustration to translate the oral history of Cambodians in Quebec, exploring erasure, memoricide, intergenerational silence and radical hope. Through it, she developed a visual methodology specific to the intergenerational trauma and loss of shared language experienced by the Khmer community.

Illustrating Against Anti-Asian Racism

In April 2020, amid a surge of anti-Asian racism tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ravy Puth launched the campaign "Illustrer contre la xénophobie" (#AsiansAreNotTheVirus). She told Radio-Canada she had faced microaggressions herself, as had members of her family, and wanted to respond through representation rather than silence.

The initiative, built around a clear editorial line — one portrait per person, no group scenes — ultimately brought together around fifty artists from Quebec. It marked a turning point in the public recognition of Ravy Puth's work, widely covered by both French- and English-language media across Canada.

Illustration by Ravy Puth, from her portfolio

Reclaiming Khmer Memory Through Art

At the heart of Ravy Puth's practice is the reconstruction of vanished Cambodian archives. Her project "From Buried to Living Archives" imagines the vinyl record sleeves that never got to exist for Pan Ron, Sin Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea, three legends of 1960s-70s Cambodian psychedelic rock whose recordings and images were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge.

Another project, "Our Food Our Resistance – Nom Pao," explores memory through cuisine, drawing on oral-history revival exercises conducted with her own mother. The work was exhibited in Montreal in 2023, then presented in 2026 at a conference on the Cambodian diaspora organized by McGill University's Southeast Asian studies program.

"Our Food Our Resistance – Nom Pao," illustration by Ravy Puth

Children's Books and Recognition

Alongside her research-creation projects, Ravy Puth illustrates several children's books built around themes of diversity and social justice. She illustrated The Doll (Second Story Press, 2021), Nhung N. Tran-Davies' autobiographical story about welcoming two refugee girls, a 2022 Blue Spruce Award finalist praised by CBC Books and The Globe and Mail among the year's best Canadian children's books.

She also illustrated Comment transformer une banane en vélo (Éditions Kata, 2022), later adapted into an educational tool by Télé-Québec, as well as L'Agenda des femmes 2020 for Éditions du remue-ménage. Her work has additionally been published in Rejoinder Journal, Rutgers University's academic journal devoted to trauma.

Next Chapter: A Graphic Novel on Quebec's Cambodians

Ravy Puth is now working on her first graphic novel, devoted to the little-known history of Cambodians who settled in Quebec. The project directly extends her master's research, aiming to give visual and narrative shape to a memory long kept in the shadows, between collective trauma and identity reconstruction.

Based in Montreal, where she also mentors young racialized creatives on contract negotiation and copyright law, Ravy Puth stands by an entirely human-made practice: her website states plainly that no artificial intelligence is involved in creating her illustrations.

Sources

• Ravy Puth Illustration — official website — https://www.ravyillustration.com/