Fonki, the tag name of a graffiti artist in Phnom Penh, was once a teenager in Montreal with a restless curiosity about his Cambodian heritage.

At 22, he began traveling to Cambodia regularly, developing a graffiti style infused with motifs from its ancient statues. He was also trying to understand how Cambodians were moving on from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the totalitarian regime that forced his parents, and hundreds of thousands of others, to flee as refugees in the 1970s.

Fonki, 35, now lives in the Cambodian capital and works out of a former garment factory. His murals of contemporary Cambodia — some will be on display at the World Expo in Japan in October — are still riffing on those ancient motifs.

“You dig it, and you research it,” he said during an interview at his studio, referring to Cambodian art and mythology. “That’s how you get back your narrative.”