Highlights to check out:
Room for New Worlds - McKnight Fellow exhibition
Playing with Ua Si Creative
Move resources like the Waterers
Features on Springboard Exchange and Go Mag - 100 Women We Love
Ka’s practice delves into meaning and manifestation with an understanding that culture is dynamic to reflect ways of existing and imagination. As an immigrant and child of refugees, Ka is driven to create possibilities through cultural innovation and facilitation.
Their work combines soft sculpture, fiber arts, installation, pedagogy, and critique through social practice. They explore the power and tensions of identity, culture, belief systems, and place, striving to create liberatory practices. They create evidence that navigates nuances without words like 'art' or 'queer' in Hmong culture. Ka challenges expectations of familiar materials and re/considers the relationships and alternatives for labor and supplies by creating objects, conversations, and spaces. Ka views their work as living sculptural installations, using visual and experiential elements as languages.
For nearly two decades, they have worked to mobilize communities to engage in system-change initiatives toward gender, racial, and queer justice. Today they continue this work both as a creative and a facilitator at the intersection of economic and community development, food systems, creative and cultural spaces, philanthropy, and more. They are committed to a practice of shared liberation through movement-building and a spirit of abundance.
Ka is a co-founder of Ua Si Creative, an HMong women and genderqueer artist collective creating and playing in the public and community realm. Ka has received multiple awards and fellowships, including the McKnight Artist Fellowship, the Jerome Foundation (Travel and Study, Jerome@Camargo), the Center for Performance and Civic Practice (Catalyst Initiative), Forecast Public Art (Early-Career Project, Mid-Career Research Project), Springboard for the Arts (20/20 Fellowship), Center for Regional and Urban Affairs (Artist Neighborhood Partnership Initiative), the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI), the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.