In 2012, artist Pao Houa observed a group of Miao men holding a military honor ceremony at their uncle’s funeral. She learned that they taught their own faucets and American flags ritual folding through YouTube videos. They bought uniforms and rich people online and military labor stores. These people, like her uncle and father, fought in secret wars in the 1960s and early 1970s, with the CIA secretly recruiting and training the Hmong minority living in Laos to fight communism. But they and their families were later rejected by the U.S. government for benefits and formal recognition.
As a gesture of memory and respect, she photographed these veterans in the formal military portrait style of her earliest series attention (2012–14). Today, those respected portraits hang on large banners in the sublime atrium of the John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin “Pao Houa: The imaginative scenery.” The first investigation of her work.
Pao Houa’s Her Attention Series (2012-14) hangs at the entrance to the John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts.Provided by Artist and Bokley Gallery. Photo: Provided by John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
For twenty years, she has reflected on her desire, hometown and skills through private lenses, taking root with her own Miao American experience while working with American landscape photography, colonial photography portraits and Miao vernacular photography. Through photos, video works and large-scale installations, she connects California’s agricultural landscape, Minnesota’s poppy fields and Laos’ jungle, and is filled with profound sorrow, humor, resilience and pride.
In JMKAC and San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) has the largest U.S. community in the San Francisco Bay Area – Worthconsin and California – the show’s expansion goes far beyond the gallery wall: Installing spacious public places and community gathering spaces The whole Sheboyganin San Jose, wheat-painted posters were not notified in the corners of boarding and on clearings.
Jodi Throckmorton, chief curator of JMKAC, said: “We can’t investigate Pao’s work without highlighting the real special thing about her practice, that is, it’s around the world, not just museums.
