10/15/22 Saturday Lecture with Pachia Lucy Vang
Saturday, 10/15/22 10am PT
Presented In-Person *and* Virtually via Zoom
Koret Auditorium, de Young museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
In-Person Tickets: $5 General Admission \ Free for TAC members.
Virtual Tickets (Zoom):
$5 Members of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Students $10 General Admission \ Free for TAC members
A recording will be available for 14 days.
Join artist and curator Pachia Lucy Vang for a dive into Hmong culture through cloth. This lecture explores the inner makings of Hmong textile traditions and fashion to reveal the enduring designs of a people whose lives have been marked by diaspora and change.
Prior to the end of the 20th century, the Hmong lived only in what were considered the most rural parts of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. At the end of the Vietnam War, however, groups in Laos were resettled into various parts of the West where today they continue to sustain a sense of cultural identity as seen in the changing styles of their dress. But what are Hmong textiles? Where did they come from? What makes them “Hmong”? And why have they been so important to people, heritage, and traditions throughout time?
Tapping into the power of oral history and folklore, Vang explores Hmong cosmology, history, and diaspora to look at how migrational patterns have shaped the evolution of styles. Highlighting the contested nature of Hmong Indigeneity to suggest new ways of understanding textiles and fashion, not just as symbols of culture but placements for land and space that become sacred to those displaced.
Pachia Lucy Vang (pronounced Puh-chee-uh) is a textile researcher, curator, and artist with a background in community organizing, grassroots exhibitions, and design. She received her Bachelor’s of Art in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and is a current MFA candidate at UC Davis expanding her practice in Textiles and Exhibitions to grow Culture through Cloth, a space dedicated to the ancient craft of paj ntaub or “flower cloth.” She has traveled throughout Southeast Asia visiting Hmong communities throughout the diaspora, which informs her work as a Hmong-American navigating culture, art, trauma and society. With a pluriversal imagination that speaks from Hmong-centered knowledge, Pachia creates to make place for marginalized communities in the process of learning and sharing forgotten histories, stories, and knowledge.
Image: A historical collar design called "dab tsho" of White Hmong lineages from Laos. Made by Yang Lee Lao, circa 1980s-90s.