Verdant Remedies: Unearthing Hmong Art and Nature

I draw what I love, and I love women’s Hmong clothes.

I love the colors and the inspiration it takes from nature, especially the paj ntaub or “flower cloth,” which is the term for Hmong textile art.

Whether I use digital or traditional mediums, I find a lot of joy drawing the clothes, adding the little details, and filling them in with vibrant colors. I love to show the elegance, femininity, and vibrancy of the clothes. It makes me feel like I’m drawing princesses again like I once did as a child.

Her journey began when her mother crossed the Mekong River while she was cradled in her womb. Fleeing the Jungles of Laos her family escaped to America with $5 to begin a new life in Minnesota. She spent half her life studying psychology, unexpectedly a recurring dream urged her to abandon psychology and pursue her passion for art. After studying the psychology behind people’s desires, she couldn’t ignore her own. Once her inspiration was unlocked, creativity flowed unhindered.

Water and travel have become central ideas in her paintings. Her work is infused with an expressively fluid style that allows viewers to travel into the past and see the echo of folktales, themes, and patterns passed down verbally from generation to generation in the Hmong culture. Storytelling is the driving force behind most of her paintings and recent public art work.

“Imagination Sparks Inspiration.”

The psychologically and emotionally taxing event of motherhood led to the exploration into my heritage, identity, and personal healing. With my background in graphic design, I leaned into illustration. In storytelling, I found joy and relief. The subject matter I gravitate toward most is the experience of Hmong women immigrants and their children, such as my grandmother and mother. Learning to see them as whole humans, beyond my caretakers, opened my mind and point of view. Finding understanding and empathy with the way they lived/live and their impact on my life has been therapeutic and inspiring. Through my art I hope that viewers feel a sense of connection, familiarity, and joy.

Bio

Khou Vue is a second-generation Hmong-American graphic designer and illustrator. After a decade-long career as a designer, she felt a strong pull toward illustration and storytelling. In her work she strives to portray themes of femininity, cultural empowerment, and social awareness. She has illustrated two children’s books; “Caged” by Kao Kalia Yang and “Tinker Toward  my Spark” by Thai Chang. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband and three children. Learn more about her work on her website. 

yog peb hais lus, if we speak, is an installation that imagines a world where everything is sentient and has the ability to speak. The artwork draws inspiration from a HMong origin story or zaj dab neeg Ntuj Tsim Teb Raug: Neeg, Noob Qoob, Nqaij, Hnub thiab Hli (The Creation or Beginning of Humans, Crops, Meat, the Sun and Moon), told by Pa Chou Yang. In one part of this story, plants walked from their place of origin and taught humans how to grow and care for them. Similarly, the objects in this work, are beings with a limited ability to share their memories by a push of a button. Each object contains short snippets of unique sounds, showcasing a diverse array of their emotions and thoughts. Audiences are invited to gently activate these objects, listen, and handle them with care.  

Pottery found me during one of the hardest chapters of my life. What began as a way to heal slowly transformed into a passion and a purpose. Each piece I make carries a part of that journey—a reminder that from pain, something beautiful can grow.

My vision begins with the very basics of nature: clay. Through hand-building techniques and the potter’s wheel, the magic begins. Many of my pieces are decorated and embellished with textiles and patterns inspired by my Hmong heritage. I create with intention, shaping each vessel to hold more than just food or flowers—it holds energy, memory, and meaning.

Creating beautiful pottery brings me joy. It connects me to the world and to the nature that surrounds me. One of my biggest inspirations is my Hmong background. My work is a reflection of that heritage and the stories that live within it—stories of strength, family, tradition, and hope.

I hope my work speaks to you, heals you, and inspires you to do what brings you joy.

As a Hmong American and first-generation refugee, my work builds upon the long history of Hmong art shaped by oppression, assimilation, and innovation. Drawing from my heritage and the diverse cultural influences that inform my identity, I blend traditional Hmong textiles—paj ntaub—with woodblock printmaking to explore themes of resilience, migration and memory.

My current practice centers on mixed-media monoprints that merge abstract landscapes with the Hmong story. I embrace improvisation, allowing shapes, colors, and forms to evolve organically. By sewing directly into my prints, I challenge the conventions of both printmaking and textile art, transforming flat images into textured, tactile forms. This process becomes a metaphor for stitching together fragments of identity, personal history, and cultural memory.

My work reimagines Hmong visual traditions through a contemporary lens—blurring the lines between print and textile, and honoring the agricultural roots of the Hmong through recurring motifs of plants and florals. Rather than pursue perfection, I embrace spontaneity, messiness, and fragility through smudging, tearing, and hand-sewing. Each piece exists in the tension between old and new, offering viewers a layered experience that invites reflection on cultural preservation, adaptation, and the beauty of imperfection.

“Tshuaj Rau Qaib”

The three digital paintings presented in this exhibition are a series inspired by a traditional Hmong chicken soup. Tshuaj Rau Qaib is translated as herbs in chicken. These herbs are the heart of each composition. The stark white background was intentional to keep the focus solely on their vivid textures and hues of the herbs.

Each herb was painted individually in Adobe Photoshop in layers, before being composed into the final image. Each arrangement of herbs were set in bowls made of glass, wood, and stone. These materials were chosen for their symbolic resonance: glass for clarity and fragility, wood for tradition and warmth, and stone for resilience and grounding. Together, they reflect the experience of recovery—physical, emotional, and cultural.

After I had open-heart surgery, the Hmong chicken soup was not just as a meal, but also medicine. Traditionally, this dish is often prepared for healing, especially after childbirth or major illness. It represents a return to balance, a reconnection with the body.

This series is both a personal reflection and a tribute. It honors the ancestral wisdom embedded in our foodways, and the role of art in reclaiming and reinterpreting memory, healing, and heritage.

Artist Bio

Third Daughter, Restless Daughter creates unique cross stitches that depict progressive work not usually seen in traditional embroidery. The unconventional work allows the two sisters to speak to all who want artwork that voices their thoughts in pretty "x"es. Influenced by their grandmother's traditional Hmong embroidery at a young age, the duo uses their love of pop culture and imagery to modernize old-fashioned cross stitches.  

Artist Statement 

Third Daughter, Restless Daughter is a sister team that creates sarcastic and snarky cross stitches. At a young age, our grandmother taught us the traditional Hmong embroidery Paj Ntaub. As life happened, we stepped away from cross stitching only to come back to it years later. Though our work isn’t your traditional looking needlepoint, we use this technique along with infusing humor, pop culture, and our personality into our designs.

We also create large scale installations that use the same method but incorporate unexpected materials such as metal gates to chicken wire. These works can be found @centro_mpls, @mnmuseum, and @springboardarts.

Our niece Grace even joined the team by creating her hilarious handwritten misfortunes. You can find her hiding under the tables at our events.

Names have always been an important aspect of every culture.  Some use it to define their trade, while others use it to highlight characteristics they want to be known for.  For the Hmong people, names are a combination of the latter and things from the natural world.  Pao Zej is a sturdy boy name to represent the rocks and stones.  Sua is a name that has many meanings, like the voice of nature, or the ability to count.  Names are important because they define a person and can shape what direction your life will take.

I am fascinated by this concept of names and its role in the Hmong community.  A good name will help you lead a good life, but a badly named child could face a lot of hardships.  Some people suffer tragedies due to their name and often have to get re-named to heal their spirit.  Even with the abundance of names that could be used, families like to stick to familiar ones so their children won’t stray. Here are two common names that most families use, Tou and Mai, which is equivalent to a John or Mary.  

My work here is based on a popular girl name that shows the love of flowers and all the beauty found in the world; Paaj.  It is also a very common name that is given to many girls for the love and care that it takes to help them bloom.  This series explores my love of painting flowers in combination with portraits inspired by the Paaj’s I know and the interpretation of their name.

Connecting to the spirit of resistance and storytelling through paaj ntaub, a traditional Hmong textile art, my art practice explores my identity as a second generation Hmong American woman raised by Hmong refugees fleeing the “secret war” in Laos. As being both Hmong and American, I straddle the in-between spaces of ethnicity and culture. I use Hmong story cloths, embroidered pictorial tapestries, as a tool for sharing my own story, as the medium finds grounding and connection to the legacy of storytellers who preserved and celebrated Hmong culture by sewing our heritage and the movement of life into cloth. As an extension to this cultural practice, I use contemporary imagery to depict my search for healing and personal agency while grappling with the tension of belonging as a Hmong American with histories of statelessness and displacement. I use vibrant colors to honor the strength and resilience of the war-town Hmong body in parallel to my own self exploration, discovery, and expressions as I contend with my conflicting identities, one from the East and the other from the West.

In my younger years I didn’t even know that we were poor. Despite three generations living under one roof, my parents made sure that we were never hungry. In the early eighties, we were living off welfare and my dad’s minimum wage income from working as a cook at various restaurants in Fresno, California. Like many displaced Southeast Asian families that were on government assistance, the food was trash. The boxed cereal, processed cheese and milk that was offered was far from the meals they once prepared using natural ingredients from the jungles and gardens or livestock if they were lucky. My mother was one to make magic in the kitchen out of nothing but she did not have the stomach to open the cans of meat nor the heart to throw them away. So in the cabinet they sat until we eventually moved out of that house. 

Food has a profound way of conjuring up memories, nostalgia and sometimes even pain. The same reasons why it comes natural for me to make art about what I love and to show my love through food. Just like my mother, Xia Her Lor, to whom I dedicate this body of work. Everything I unintentionally know about cooking and gardening was from her. She wasn’t a teacher. She was a doer and you just had to observe and learn at your own discretion. From a watercolor painting of Hmong medicinal herbs to the Ancona hen boldly stating “Ua Neeg Zoo” which in English translates to “Be a good person” (a reminder from both parents each time we were out of line) every piece embodies fragments of my childhood. 

True to my mother’s creativity and ingenuity, some of my pieces were painted on recycled canvas. Something about the unseen layers add so much more depth, the human touch, the imperfections. And just like her, I will not tell you what each piece means or symbolizes… you’ll have to observe for yourself. 

About Xee

Xee Reiter is a multi-faceted, self-taught Hmong American artist based in Saint Paul, MN. Her explorations and past works include illustrations for books, restaurants and online publications. You can see her murals and exhibits across the metro and beyond including WE Mural curated by UaSi Creative for the city Bloomington, “Wonderland” for Creative Enterprise Zone and “Home” in Stevens Point, WI. 

She uses various mediums, specializing in ink, watercolor, acrylic and natural materials to tell stories through both traditional and digital forms. Xee continues to set her sight on new challenges by using visual art to preserve cultural roots for future generations.