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Making the Invisible Visible Confronting the Complexities of Identity, Family, and Culture through Art Kou Vang Art and History We are surrounded by art in all the things we see, touch, hear, feel, and experience. The book you are holding in your hands was created and designed by artists. Artists also selected the colors, created the patterns, chose the fabric, and designed the style of clothing you are wearing. Art enriches our lives and adds texture to everything we come in contact with from the minute we awake. Since grade school, art has been an outlet for me to explore my innermost thoughts. Art is a form of expression that also brings about reconciliation: to make sense of situations and interpret the world and people around me. My art expresses from the heart what sometimes cannot be said. It is this inner force that has given me strength and courage to step outside of my comfort zone to examine the intersection of culture, environment, and identity. As I reflect on my childhood in the refugee camps, my memory wanders back to a young girl with hair caked in light brown dirt. She is dressed inadustycottonT-shirttokeepcoolduringthehot,humidThaisummers. She is wearing an almond-shaped amulet, wrapped with paj ntaub, around her neck. Mother says it’s to keep sickness away. As I start to compose and paint this vision of myself as a child, I feel bursts of energy surging through my hands as the oil paint melds with the canvas. I apply gentle brushstrokes with transparent tan colors. As I add more paint, the figure beginstoemergefromthebackground.Wherehaveallthechildrenwhowere there at the camp gone to? Are they alive? I wonder as I paint dark brown, heavy lines to outline the figure. My heart longs for the worry-free mind and pure heart of the child I once was. I do not stop until I complete the image I envision. In front of me is my creation, a painting of a young girl holding a board with numbers on it, like a mug shot. This image of myself Kou Vang also represents many with similar stories, immigrants who were persecuted and tried to escape their conflicted situation. As I look thoroughly at the finished work, I see a young girl without a home, a country, a place to belong. She has three things left to bring with her on her journey as a refugee: her hope, dreams, and memory. I appreciate and understand the sacrifices made for the survival of Hmong people. Many from my parents’ generation have died without leaving so much as a trace that they ever existed, without anyone knowing the hardships they bore in their hearts, without ever sharing the tales that connect the United States to Laos. Many came to America and lived as if they had already died. Some died feeling as if they had nothing to live for. Others tried to forget where they came from and what they had experienced but were haunted. Overall, most feel fortunate to be alive and to have been given a second chance, if not for themselves, then at least for their children. Out of tens of thousands of Hmong who died in the Vietnam War, a small but significant percentage was spared to bear witness to the evils of humanity. Those who have seen these evils with their own eyes help to connect us in a more immediate way to our shared history by telling us their stories. We were surrounded and trapped by an army of thirty soldiers. They were going to execute all of us. They lined us up at the edge of a small riverbank and began to slash the throats of the people in our group. There were only three people left before it was my brother’s turn to be killed. My father was not a Christian, but he began to chant up to the sky asking for tswv ntuj (lord of the heavens) to bring mercy and justice on us. He shouted for everyone to call. We all chanted, repeating it as the soldiers made us kneel and placed our faces to the ground. I remember it was ten o’clock in the morning, but the sky suddenly turned pitch black. Hail the size of eggs began to fall from the sky. Lightning began flashing all around. Large gusts of wind blew through. We thought that we would surely die this time, if not by the hand of these soldiers then by the...

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