Pao Houa Her: My grandfather turned into a tiger

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Pao Houa Her, "My grandfather turned into a tiger," 2018

An opening reception is scheduled for Friday 11 January at 7 PM.

My grandfather turned into a tiger, is comprised of a new photographic installation of black and white, color and lenticular photographs taken in both Minneapolis/St Paul and Laos. The artist mixes and combines images that range from a Laos open plain littered with ancient stone burial jars to portraits of elderly men and women to empty studio backdrops filled with kitsch plastic flowers. The title of the exhibition references a family legend where after his death in the Vietnam war, her grandfather turned into a tiger and terrorized her grandmother’s village. Using that story as a starting point, Her’s exhibition demonstrates her unassuming sense of humor and knack for playing with the unanticipated. A Hmong artist who immigrated to the United States from Laos, Her uses myth and memory to explore themes of mythology, illusion and transformation throughout the work. 

BIOGRAPHY Pao Houa Her was born in Laos in 1982. She received an MFA in Photography from Yale University in 2012 and attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She has had solo exhibitions at Bockley Gallery; Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, East Lansing MI; and Bindery Projects, St. Paul. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston; MAIIAM, Chiang Mai, Thailand; SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Telemark Art Center, Skien, Norway; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Camera Club of New York, New York City. She is represented by Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, and lives and works in the Twin Cities.