The talk will focus on a series Pao has produced in 2015 titles Attention, which is currently displayed at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, part of the exhibition Diaspora: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia. Attention is a series of stately military portraits framed in thick gold borders. The series was produced in Minnesota, where the artist lives, and which has one of the biggest Hmong communities that had relocated to the United States after the Vietnam War. However, no recognition of rank or status has been given to Hmong veterans that fought in the Vietnam War alongside the American soldiers. To fill this recognition gap, the Hmong veterans have turned to celebrate their own service in war by observing on YouTube and emulating American military ceremonies. 

The talk is in English with Thai translation 
Organized by MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai Art Conversation, Elevations Laos, Bockley Gallery. 

Wine will be served with snacks! 

About the Artist
Pao Houa Her (born 1982, northern Laos, and lives and works Minnesota, USA) works across multiple genres and technologies of photography to address Hmong identity and related notions of desire and belonging within the Hmong community and its diaspora. Pao holds a BFA in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, MN, and an MFA in Photography from Yale University, CT where she was the first-ever Hmong to graduate from the program. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards including the McKnight Fellowship and Jerome Foundation Grant, and she is currently Lecturer in Photography at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Recent solo exhibitions include Attention, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and My Grandfather turned into a Tiger, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis. Her work is in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Singapore Art Museum, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, among others.