Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape

Pao Houa Her uses her camera to explore the longing and desire of a community culturally defined by an elsewhere. Rooted in the experience of her Hmong community and shaped by family experiences and lore passed down by her elders, Her takes a formally rigorous approach to photography to explore the complex intertwining of artifice and desire bound up in dreams of homeland.

Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape is the first survey of Her’s practice, covering nearly twenty years of work, with selections from six major series to date, as well as new work made in the jungles of Laos.

Co-organized by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) in California, the exhibition embraces the diverse U.S. contexts in which Hmong communities have adapted and fabricated homelands. Though specific to Her’s own Hmong American experience, The Imaginative Landscape is a meditation on the construction of homeland that resonates across a variety of diasporic experiences.

In both Sheboygan and San Jose, the exhibition will exceed the institutional space with lightboxes in local restaurants and community gathering places, wheat pasted images in public locations, and billboard displays. A complete list of sites will be announced closer to the exhibition opening.

This exhibition is co-organized by Jodi Throckmorton, JMKAC chief curator, and Lauren Schell Dickens, SJMA chief curator.

SJMA’s exhibition will be on view July 15, 2025, into early 2026.