“My work attempts to break down the larger story of what it means to be a Hmong American into discrete moments in time. I see each small moment, each new portrait, as a kind of poetic note in a broader, diffuse narrative. My most recent work moves into even more conceptual space, using constructed/staged elements to play with themes of geography and longing.”—Pao Houa HerAperture has collaborated with artist and 2023–24 Next Step Award recipient Pao Houa Her on a special limited-edition lenticular print of Flower penis (2017), offered in conjunction with the publication of Her's first monograph, My grandfather turned into a tiger ... and other illusions (2024), where the image is featured as the opening of the book.Her’s work draws inspiration from a myriad of sources: apocryphal family lore; portraits of the artist’s community and self; and reimagined landscapes, with Minnesota and Northern California standing in for Laos. The compelling and personal narratives are grounded in the traditions and contemporary metaphors of the Hmong diasporic community. My grandfather turned into a tiger brings together four of the artist’s major series, including the title work that reimagines her family’s history before leaving Laos. Other work deals with a scandal within the Hmong community in which hundreds of elders were swindled as part of a fraudulent investment scheme built around the promise of a new Hmong homeland. In another series, tonally rich black-and-white still lifes of silk flowers collected by her mother are presented alongside images of flowers that adorn the digitally manipulated, hyper-colored popular backdrops used in Hmong photo studios and on dating apps. As Kong Pheng Pha wrote of her work for Aperture magazine, “Faux flora epitomizes a major hallucinogen in Her’s work. ‘The floral makes something hard to look at beautiful to look at,’ Her says. The paradoxical pain and pleasure in looking requires a psychic reconciliation to disentangle the various oppositional elements within Her’s photographs.”The Next Step Award was initiated in 2020 and is presented by Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York and Aperture, in partnership with the 7|G Foundation. The award supports US-based artists at critical junctures in their artistic development. Reconsidering equity across the country and in arts institutions, the award also supports the presentation of diverse opinions, as well as timely lens-based work that is relevant to today’s visual culture and society across a wide array of genres or approaches.
