Pao Houa Her
Hmong American, b. 1982
Untitled (Portrait), from After the Fall of Hmong Teb Chaw, 2017
Archival pigment print
_{© 2017 Pao Houa Her}

An elegant woman, wearing traditional clothing, gazes into the distance surrounded by dense foliage. Evoking the jungles of the artist’s homeland, this photograph was taken at a suburban center for elders in Minnesota. This arresting portrait is part of a series the artist made drawing on traditional, formal Hmong portraiture set against idealized backgrounds. Pao Houa Her’s family hid in and fled through the jungles of Laos after the Laotian Civil War when she was very young. The artist’s Hmong culture has always informed her work. With allusions to another place and time, this black and white photograph recalls an imagined, yearned for homeland that exists in the collective memory of the Hmong diasporic community.