Pao Houa Her: My grandfather turned into a tiger… and other illusions

Pao Houa Her’s first major monograph, My grandfather turned into a tiger … and other illusions, explores the fundamental concepts of home and belonging: illusion, desire, and loss.

Pao Houa Her’s work draws inspiration from a myriad of 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. Other work deals with a scandal within the Hmong community in which hundreds of elders were swindled as part of a fraudulent investment scheme built around the promise of a new Hmong homeland. In another series, tonally rich black-and-white still lifes of silk flowers collected by her mother are presented alongside images of flowers that adorn the digitally manipulated, hyper-coloured popular backdrops used in Hmong photo studios and on dating apps. This beautifully designed monograph showcases Her’s keen eye on the line between ersatz and authenticity; as the artist has stated, photography is “a truth if you want it to be a truth.”

My grandfather turned into a tiger is the result of the Next Step Award, a partnership between Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, in collaboration with the 7|G Foundation.

Each cover is unique, featuring up to thirty-two jacket iterations, but is anchored by the same sticker on the front and back.

Pao Houa Her (born in Laos, 1982) is a Hmong American visual artist based in Blaine, Minnesota. Her is an assistant professor in photography and moving images at the University of Minnesota. She received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2009 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2012. She has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship in 2016 and 2022, and completed a residency at Light Work, Syracuse, New York. She has had several solo exhibitions of her work, including Paj qaum ntuj / Flowers of the Sky (2022) at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, PHH Emplotment (2020) at the Or Gallery, Vancouver, and After the Fall of Hmong Tebchaw (2019) at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Paul, Minnesota. Her work is held in public collections, including the Singapore Art Museum and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. 

Godfre Leung is an art critic and curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in Vancouver. His writing has appeared in ArtAsiaPacific, C Magazine, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. At CAG, he has organized exhibitions by Dionne Lee, Sesemiya, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. 

Kong Pheng Pha is an associate professor of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. Pha’s work has been published in scholarly books, journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Aperture, Hmong Today, and Twin Cities Daily Planet. 

Audrey Sands is a photography curator and historian. Sands has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a curatorial fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. 

Mai Der Vang is a Hmong American author and poet. A recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, Vang has published poetry in Tin House, American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at California State University, Fresno. 

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer.Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Book Critics Circle, Chautauqua Prize, and American Library Association, among others. She is a Soros, McKnight, and Guggenheim fellow. 

 

Pao Houa Her: My grandfather turned into a tiger… and other illusions
Photographs by Pao Houa Her
Text by Godfre Leung, Kong Pheng Pha, Mai Der Vang, Kao Kalia Yang
Interview by Audrey Sands
Aperture, 23 January 2024
21.6 x 17 cm
RRP $60

Order Book