Pao Houa Her: Family Lore and Reimagined Landscapes

Aperture, in collaboration with the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design at the New School, is pleased to present a conversation between artist Pao Houa Her and photographer and educator Ka-Man Tse, discussing Her’s debut monograph, My grandfather turned into a tiger … and other illusions (Aperture, 2024).

Pao Houa Her’s work draws inspiration from myriad sources: apocryphal family lore; portraits of the artist’s community and self; and reimagined landscapes, with Minnesota and Northern California standing in for Laos. The compelling and personal narratives are grounded in the traditions and contemporary metaphors of the Hmong diasporic community. My grandfather turned into a tiger brings together four of the artist’s major series, including the title work, which reimagines her family’s history before leaving Laos.

This program is presented in partnership with The New School. This event is free and open to all.

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Pao Houa Her (born in Laos, 1982) is a Hmong American artist and assistant professor in photography and moving images at the University of Minnesota. She holds an MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art (2012) and a BFA in photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2009). Her’s work has been presented as a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 2022–23 and she was included as part of the Whitney Biennial in 2022. In 2023, Her was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is represented by Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.

Ka-Man Tse is a photographer, video artist, and educator. She received an MFA from Yale University and a BA from Bard College, and has exhibited her work at the Lianzhou Foto Festival, Guangdong, China; Para Site and Lumenvisum, Hong Kong; the 2016 Hong Kong Contemporary Film Festival; and Videotage’s Both Sides Now III: Final Frontiers, in Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, and the United Kingdom. She has taught at Cooper Union, City College of New York, and Yale School of Art, and is currently director of BFA photography at Parsons.

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Image: Pao Houa Her, Untitled (real opium, behind opium backdrop), 2020, from The Imaginative Landscape; from Pao Houa Her: My grandfather turned into a tiger … and other illusions (Aperture, 2024). © 2024 Pao Houa Her