Appleton, Wisconsin

Ger Xiong/Ntxawg Xyooj
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Pachia Vang

Date: June 5, 2027

Ger Xiong’s project will unfold through a series of workshops in Hmong communities in Wisconsin and will center Hmong metalwork and jewelry traditions, inviting participants to reflect on history, grief and loss, colonization, assimilation, and migration while practicing traditional craftmaking, and contributing to a growing archive of Hmong experiences. Xiong’s gathering will bring participants from across the state to share a traditional meal and present them with gifts and portraits created during the workshops.

About the Artist

Ger Xiong/Ntxawg Xyooj (b. 1993) was born in Thailand and immigrated to the United States in 1993 as a Hmong refugee of the Vietnam War. Working primarily in metals, jewelry, adornment, and textiles, he explores cultural identity, assimilation, colonization, and migration through the lens of his Hmong American experience.
Pachia Lucy Vang (she/her) is an Associate Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and a HMong cultural bearer practicing through her studio, Culture through Cloth. Backed by over a decade of community leadership, her background spans non-profit program development to independent curatorial initiatives and ethnographic fieldwork in Laos and across the HMong diaspora. Her practice centers art and art-making to reclaim fractured knowledge within public spheres. Notable recent projects include Threads of Belonging (2026), a collaborative woven mural supported by the National Academy of Design’s Abbey Mural Prize, and the landmark exhibition Cloth as Land: HMong Indigeneity (2023). She holds an MFA in Design from UC Davis.

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