Some Stories Are Too Big for Words
Part of my role as a curator is to present the stories that artists want to share with the world. One of the most fascinating stories I have studied is Cy Thao’s Hmong Migration. In an ambitious and inspiring series of paintings, Cy tells the story of the Hmong culture. He has beautifully illustrated 5,000 years of his religious, traditional and oral histories into 50 dense and sometimes tragic episodes. It begins by unfurling the Hmong creation story, their expulsion from China, resettlement in Southeast Asia, and then for some families, the dangerous journey to the Twin Cities.
Cy wasn’t old enough to record the events as they were happening. But he has spoken about his trips back to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia to speak with people who fought in and lived through the Vietnam War, collected stories of forced migration from friends and strangers, all of which contributed to this expansive history of a culture marked by violence, displacement and, ultimately, resilience. By closing the distance between himself and his homeland, Cy went to the people who shared their recollections of what happened, bringing himself and others closer to this inspiring epic.
I think the Hmong Migration series is a formative text for better understanding the Hmong community as it becomes increasingly prominent in the Twin Cities. It’s a beautifully expansive artwork and a form of storytelling that combines creative languages. Cy takes on numerous narrative roles as a writer and painter; the multiple perspectives and birds-eye-view composition of many of the canvases acknowledges the storyteller’s ability to speak from different vantage points as well as the numerous voices that contributed to the work. For Cy, this history includes incidents he knows quite well and felt compelled to share. As it moves through time and across the globe, the time-skipping episodes captured in the Hmong migration come into sharper and sharper focus. There is the grandeur of specific formative events as well as the chaos of battles between the Hmong and Maoist soldiers.
What began as personal journey, in which one person looked for his place within history, quickly turned into something much larger. The Hmong Migration is just too big to written down. In order to preserve and recount what happened when Cy and his ancestors travelled long distances across land and time, this had to be a story that was told with paint.