Innocence of Hmong Beauty

Illustration + Graphic Tee

This piece reflects a lot of my inner thoughts on what Hmong means to me and what matters to me in my culture. The girl represents beauty, of course, but she also represents innocence. She’s innocent to her own mind and what capabilities she may have. Her jewels add to her beauty. 
Someone told me, the more jewels you have, the richer you are. The jewels simply represent the Hmong culture to me. The Hmong textile collar embraces that Hmong neck piece even more and your attention to linger in the culture.

Because I don’t like wearing Hmong hats, I left her hat deep black purple with no Black and White stripe. I made her earrings huge because I recalled my mother’s mother’s real aged silver earrings. I was told they were larger than today’s modern Hmong earrings and weigh a lot. And I made her eyes big to make sure you look at her face —as perfect as it seems, her mind is not.

I purposely set her in a opium field as the Hmong people in Laos do work in opium fields. The opium field represent the ugly she may face. Somehow it hit me that some Hmong girls don’t go over the age of 23 without getting married and trapped into harvesting farms or just trapped for the rest of their lives. I almost think they don’t see themselves bigger than what they can do and become. The world is so big, yet they are stuck there.

pachiaaa | designed age: 22