Panel

In a recent interview for the Hmong Museum’s Meet the Artist series, elder Pa Lee Thao described learning how to embroider “flower cloths” from her mother when she was just five years old. Such intricate geometric and abstracted patterns—rooted in animist spirituality—adorned personal effects such as sashes and coin purses and was a shared visual language within an oral culture. These embroideries served as a repository of knowledge and played important roles in rituals and rites of passage. This panel, which took Pa Lee Thao more than six months to create, incorporates key Hmong designs—such as the double-spiral “snail” motif, which signifies family growth—into an innovative, all-over composition. In explaining her practice, the artist said, “For us elders, [embroidery] was our life. We keep doing it as a way to remember that we are Hmong.”