Ia Vang
Ia Vang | Laos b.1960 | ‘Pha pra vet’ (story-telling cloth) with Wat Tham Krabok 2008 | Reverse appliqué and embroidery on cotton and polyester | 238 x 150cm | Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
‘Pha pra vet’ (story-telling cloth) with Wat Tham Krabok 2008
Ia Vang is a Laotian textile artist who draws upon personal and cultural narratives in her embroidery work. Patterned textiles has a centuries-old tradition in Hmong culture, intricately detailed costumes worn by women and men helped to distinguish clans and sub-clans within a single community. After the mass exile of Laotian Hmongs as a result of the ‘Secret War’ in Laos, textile traditions evolved, moving beyond representations of kinship into social and political expressions.
The textile ‘Pha pra vet’ (story-telling cloth) with Wat Tham Krabok2008 speaks of the artist’s childhood experience of war-torn Laos. It depicts her family’s journey from a rural village, escaping attack from Pathet Lao soldiers, traversing the Mekong River into Thailand. The bold colours, the rich pattern and geometric rhythms, reflect the strength and vitality of the artist. The use of figurative representation departs from traditional abstracted embroidered patterns and enables artists, like Vang, to express the complex cultural changes facing contemporary Hmong communities within Laos and its diaspora.
