Pao Houa Her’s Kwv Txhiaj (pronounced kue-tsia or KUE-CHEE-ah) refers to Hmong song poetry. It is a Hmong oral tradition and a storytelling technology. Originally performed in pairs as a call-and-response, it takes an extemporaneous form. Rooted in ancient courtship rites, this song poetry is also performed for occasions such as commemoration, healing, and moral teaching within the community. At times, audiences may even suggest themes for the song poetry. This improvisational nature inevitably carries a sense of uniqueness. The duration of a performance is variable and can last for hours depending on the will of the song poet who initiates it.
Throughout modern and contemporary history, kwv txhiaj has been appropriated multiple times. Following the immeasurable loss of Hmong males conscripted to resist communism in Vietnam during the Cold War, a thriving kwv txhiaj audio cassette industry emerged among survivors in the mid-1980s.
In the 1990s, a travel documentary VHS industry appeared, offering guided tours of the teb chaw (pronounced tay-chaw which translated as land-place) to Hmong diasporas traveling to Laos. Her remembers these VHS tours playing in her family’s living room in St. Paul, Minnesota. Between the narrated collages of sacred and secular landscapes, kwv txhiaj flowed as a soundtrack.
Passing through the isolation of the pandemic, this song poetry began to be performed even more actively within the Hmong community-especially among the younger generation-through social media platforms by rappers and classical voice practitioners. Near the end of the pandemic, the sudden death of Her’s spouse gave kwv txhiaj a different meaning for her.
In this way, Kwv Txhiaj touches upon Pao Houa Her’s sense of eternal community, a land that can never be permanently reconnected, and people with whom a meeting cannot be promised. The performers in the video continue their response without facing each other, the melodic lines combined with mono-syllabic words, the rhythms individualized by each performer's breath, and the tonal play glimpsed in the refrains - all of these reach even those who do not speak Hmong as a singular musical emotion.
About the artist
Pao Houa Her is a Hmong American artist. Her’s artwork is rooted in stories of migration, desire, and belonging. Through photography, video, and site-specific installation, Her stays attentive to the shifting nature of memory, multi-directional time, and simultaneous truths related to Hmong intergenerational and transnational experiences. With trickster intention, she addresses colonial histories and aesthetics to rescript authenticity and representation.
Her’s recent solo presentations include the institutional survey The Imaginative Landscape, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, and San José Museum of Art, CA (2025–26); The Modern Window: Pao Houa Her, Museum of Modern Art, NYC (2024–25); Nim ye, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis (2024); and Paj quam ntuj / Flowers of the Sky, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2022–23). Upcoming and recent group exhibitions include After the Monsoon: Art & War in Southeast Asia, National Gallery Singapore (2026); Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA, and Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2024–26); Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions, KADIST, San Francisco, CA (2024–25); The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC (2022); and Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It’s Kept, NYC (2022). Her work is collected by KADIST, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, MAIIAM, National Gallery of Art, Singapore Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Walker Art Center, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.