Acclaimed Minnesota Hmong American artist Pao Houa Her takes over Sheboygan for retrospective

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. ― It was a little after noon at the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association on a warm day in June. Hmong elders had finished their lunches and were getting ready to play bingo.

“If you win you get a toilet paper roll,” HMAA President Sheila Yang said. “The elders love the paper toilet rolls.”

Bingo numbers were called out in Hmong and English. Elders dropped chips onto their boards. The ’70s-style wood-paneled walls of the dining hall were adorned with photographs of HMAA’s former presidents ― mostly men, save for two women and, now, Yang. A glass case held scores of Hmong cultural artifacts, trophies and portraits.

But there were also new additions — photographs and lightboxes from Minnesota-based Hmong American artist Pao Houa Her’s series “My Mother’s Flowers.” The series is an exploration of floral iconography in traditional Hmong aesthetics and the ways some Hmong men search on dating sites for “pure” Laotian women who “haven’t been Westernized.”

But at HMAA, the images also felt familiar, comforting, and opened other conversations.

Yeng Xiong, 25, admired a photograph of a young woman with a hugely floral background.

“It reminds me of the old days, of just coming here [from Thailand] and then being so excited to dress up in Hmong clothes, and stuff like that,” Xiong said. “It’s nice to see photos of people from back then because we didn’t really have chances to take photos of ourselves.”

This year, Hmong Americans mark the 50th anniversary of their arrival in the United States after assisting the U.S. in the Vietnam War and the CIA-funded Secret War in Laos.

Sheboygan has the 10th biggest Hmong population in the country, at around 5,200.

HMAA is one of nine locations around the city of Sheboygan where the Twin Cities artist Her ― an assistant professor in photography and moving images at the University of Minnesota, a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship winner, the Star Tribune’s 2022 Artist of the Year, and the first Hmong American to be in the Whitney Biennial ― is showing her work.

Other than the lightboxes and karaoke backdrops at Thai Café on N. 14th Street and free calendars at Union Asian Market, the other locations are notably less Hmong-centered.

They range from a lightbox almost surreptitiously placed in front of a brewery to commercial signage in front of a dentist and orthodontist’s office on a hill, overlooking a winding road.

Her’s work is inserted into the city’s landscape, sometimes blending in, sometimes sticking out. She likes to play with that tension.

The retrospective was organized by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, which has had a relationship with the local Hmong community since the mid-1980s.

Aside from commercial, community and art spaces, Her’s work also can be found at the Sheboygan County Courthouse. A courthouse isn’t a place where people usually come across art, but it felt important for the citywide exhibition.

“Pao made the point to me like, ‘Yeah, people don’t feel comfortable in a lot of spaces,’” Kohler Art Center chief curator Jodi Throckmorton said. “So we kind of want people to feel slightly uncomfortable when they go to some of these places to see the art ― or there are people there who don’t expect it.”

Look closely at the wood-paneled walls of Sheboygan County Circuit Judge Natasha L. Torry’s courtroom, and you’ll see stains from people’s hair, smudged in over the years and hours of trials.

The courtroom hosts black-and-white portraits of Hmong elders from Her’s 2017 series “After the Fall of Hmong Teb Chaws.” The portraits place Hmong elders in lush landscapes, similar to those of their homeland. But the story behind the pictures is much darker. These are elders who were swindled into a fraudulent investment scheme about buying land in Laos for a new Hmong community.

There’s also a lightbox from “My Mother’s Flowers,” portraying a bamboo stalk gathering dust, set against a bright red background.

“Within the first week of it being up, I had a Hmong defendant in here that I was sentencing to incarceration, thanking me for the artwork, telling me how nice it is,” Torry said. “After he got sentenced!”

At the John Michael Kohler Art Center, on display is a series of new lenticular prints shot in jungle locations in Laos, where her father said their family hid. Upon seeing these at the opening, some Hmong elders cried, Her said. It brought up trauma from the Secret War and the Vietnam War.

In Her’s newest work, a 24-minute single-channel video “Kwv txhiaj in the Valley of the Widows,” she recorded Hmong performers in Laos singing kwv txhiaj (pronounced koot-SEE-ah), or Hmong song poetry. It’s used for education, as well as discreet communication and sensitive topics that it would be rude to directly address.

Their melodic words in Hmong echo through the gallery on purposefully glitchy video, singing about grief. Unbeknownst to Her, the cameraman told the singers about the untimely passing of her husband, Ya Yang, in 2021. It became the inspiration for their song.

Her is perhaps more curious about works that are easily overlooked, that blend in, that shapeshift.

A lightbox of a jungle in Laos is attached to the front of 3 Sheeps Brewing Co., easily lost in a bland landscape of billboards and warehouses.

Black-and-white lightboxes of a rugged landscape in Northern California farmed by Hmong people are perched near the ceiling at Paradigm Coffee & Music.

It’s an experience she’s familiar with, too.

“I’m also a very basic Hmong girl, too,” Her said. “I can go to a Hmong event and be completely Hmong, and I can then go to another event that is a complete artist event. They don’t necessarily get to see each other and there isn’t a hybrid of those two things sometimes, but they coexist.”

Where: Nine locations throughout Sheboygan. Visit the handout at jmkac.org/whats-on/exhibitions.

When: Ends Aug. 31.

Hours: Vary by location. Check the handout.

Cost: Free.

Info: jmkac.org