Pao Houa Her’s practice engages with the legacies, potentials, and aesthetics of landscape and portrait photography traditions, examining the complex intertwining of desire, homeland, and artifice. Rooted in the experience of her Hmong community and shaped by family experiences and lore passed down by her elders, Her’s work centers women as the knowledge bearers of both past and future. Using a formally rigorous photographic approach, Her explores constructions of homeland that resonate across diasporas.

The Imaginative Landscape: Pao Houa Her is an unconventional survey of over 20 years. Seen through the expansive titular series, it traces conceptual ties between past series, new work, and work still under development, connecting California agricultural landscapes to the jungles of Laos, poppy fields in Minnesota, and beyond. The exhibition is co-organized by Lauren Schell Dickens, chief curator at SJMA, and Jodi Throckmorton, chief curator at John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and will be presented at both organizations simultaneously. 

Support

The Imaginative Landscape: Pao Houa Her is co-organized by Lauren Schell Dickens, chief curator at the San José Museum of Art, and Jodi Throckmorton, chief curator at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Shebogyan, Wisconsin.

The Imaginative Landscape: Pao Houa Her is made possible with lead support from Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The San José Museum of Art presentation is also made possible by the SJMA Exhibitions Fund, with generous support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, and Wanda Kownacki.

Operations and programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by principal support from SJMA’s Board of Trustees, a Cultural Affairs Grant from the City of San José, and the Lipman Family Foundation; by lead support from the Adobe Foundation, the California Arts Council, Toby and Barry Fernald, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Tammy and Tom Kiely, the Knight Foundation, Evelyn and Rick Neely, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Skyline Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the SJMA Director's Council and Council of 100; and with significant endowment support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the San José Museum of Art Endowment Fund established by the Knight Foundation at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.