Pao Her photographs in Laos – her birth country, and where she visits annually, and Minnesota, USA, where she and her family resettled as refugees in the late 1980s. Her’s often open-ended serial practice in portraiture, still life, and landscape genres, explore simultaneity of the aspirational and artificial, with a focus on the Hmong diasporic community. She is particularly interested in studio portraiture and its traces beyond the studio – composed backdrops, posing, fake flowers and ornamentation. Effectively playing with the veracity of the image and its subjects, we can never be sure if Her has staged, manipulated, or straight documented her subjects. Wheat pasted directly to the wall – just as photographs were throughout temporary homes in the refugee camps in Her’s experience – these photographs allow us a direct encounter, continuing her questioning of presentation and perfection.
