ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
Los Tsev (Home): Cia Siab (Hope) in WI is a community-led and community-driven exhibit that grapples with the ongoing historical trauma of war and healing. By drawing on mundane everyday, HMoob life in Wisconsin, this exhibit draws audience members to contemplate the ways war shows up at home (in the US and in the private space) and how a displaced community continues to live through revitalization and changing the landscapes around them.
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Los Tsev: Cia Siab, WI is both a digital and a traveling exhibit in WI, and had traveled to Eau Claire, Fox Valley, Madison, Milwaukee, La Crosse, and Wausau. Our exhibitions started in 2021 and will continue into the fall of 2025, in recognition of the 50th year anniversary of HMoob and Southeast Asian resettlement. Join us in April 2025 at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the September 2025 exhibition at the Annex Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which commemorates the 50th year anniversary of HMoob resettlement in the United States.
The exhibition opens its doors to audience members both familiar and unfamiliar with the HMoob and even less familiar with America’s Secret War in Laos (1964-1973). This project amplifies, Wisconsin Humanities aim to strengthen the roots of community life through educational and cultural programs that inspire civic participation and individual imagination.
This exhibit welcomes audience members to engage in conversations about war, historical trauma, memory, resilience, and healing. Showcasing how HMoob contest and remake memories despite national silence and forgetting about wars abroad, this exhibit reminds Americans that war and violence are not geographically nor historically contained. It also asks the audience members to dwell on the humanity of survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators (including the country responsible for creating the trauma) rather than their cultural or racial difference.
The HMoob Story Project invites all of us to reflect, leave, and create new memories as a way to reconcile with the erasure of the Secret War from America’s national memory. The exhibit in its interactive medium will enable audience members to recognize shared human experiences beyond racial and ethnic lines, to establish new obligations to one another, and to create new forms of remembering and healing for communities haunted by ongoing war and racial trauma.
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Acknowledgements:
This material is supported in part by the: National Endowment for the Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities Council, Fox Valley Community Foundation, Green Bay Community Foundation, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Board, and Wisconsin Historical Society.
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Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the funders.
MEET THE TEAM
This exhibit is uniquely driven by humanities experts in their respective fields and HMoob Studies, alongside HMoob community experts who are activists, HMoob Studies scholars, and community members. We utilize community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods to guide our community curation processes.
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Our community partners includes Cia Siab Inc. (La Crosse, WI), Freedom, Inc. (Madison, WI), Hmong American Women Association (Milwaukee, WI), Appleton Public Library (Appleton, WI), Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, WI), the Hmong Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, the Critical Hmong Studies Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and the Hmong Studies Emphasis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ​
The pilot exhibit held at UW-Oshkosh was co-sponsored by the Institute for Regional and International Studies (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Center for Southeast Asian Studies (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Pepsi Programming Allocation Fund (University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh).
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Research, object collection, and planning are enabled by the Wisconsin Arts Board Creative Communities Grant and the Morgridge Center for Public Service (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Community Research Project Grant.
Our exhibit takes a community-based and decolonized approach. Our vision is to:
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Center around HMoob experience
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Empower HMoob communities, cultivate collective healing, and promote cross-cultural understanding among the wider public.
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Center the theme of “cia siab” (hope) to understand HMoob lived experiences of war, resettlement, historical trauma, and healing.
How can you contribute?
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We are looking for objects you may have or would like to create; such as traditional objects, digital art, photography, artistic representation (2D, 3D, sculptures, mixed media, videos, audio) or objects of use in Wisconsin (e.g. couch, household items, etc). We are looking to capture youth, women, LGBTQ and elders’ stories.
We are interested in multigenerational stories, thus we need YOUR HELP to achieve and capture these stories.
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Questions to think about when submitting stories:
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What does "cia siab" means to you?
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What is your HMoob Wisconsin refugee story?
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What does healing look like for you?
Submission
Take a photo of object or have your audio file
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On a White background/ neutral background
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Preferred to take a high-quality photo with a ruler to show dimension. This will help with how to display your object in our exhibition design.
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Limit of 10 submissions, but no limit on file sizes.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY