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ASA 141
Teaching Hmong History and Culture Through Art
The way that I interpreted the Hmong use of textiles was almost like the textiles were a way that the Hmong recorded their history and culture without having a written language. The White Hmong and Blue/Green Hmong also used these textiles as differentiation of which group they were from, similar to how we learned about the kimonos in Japan being very specific to each family and region of Japan. This again reinforces how textiles were their most important mode of communication, which is not a traditional mode of communication in most Western countries. However, it does seem to be a more common theme in other cultures. I wonder why that would be important in other countries, and how those cultural differences may have developed. Another very poignant example of the way that communication was carried out throughout textiles was through story cloths. I particularly thought it was interesting that the story cloths were not only made by women, as would be expected. The men actually make designs and are part of the story cloths process. Paj ntab (flower cloths or story cloths) examples are shown below.
Traditional paj ntab story cloths, crossing the Mekong is pictured above
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