QUILTS: Hmong Tell Their Own Story

Traditional Hmong tapestries tell their story with abstract designs, communicating their own symbolic meanings to these agrarian people of the Laotian highlands.

With the experiences of the Vietnam War, the traditional patterns often changed to depictions of a people caught between combatants in the conflict. Geometric designs gave way to pictures of dead and dying soldiers, of bombed huts and planes dropping Agent Orange. Examples of the work are on display in “Hmong War Quilts,” on view at the Fullerton Museum Center through June 28.

Many of the Hmong of Laos (which borders Vietnam and Cambodia) were recruited by the CIA to fight the Communists, but when the U.S. military pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, its Laotian recruits were forced to flee to refugee camps in Thailand.

There, the refugees were encouraged by relief workers “to tell their story, to tell the horrors of the war and everything that happened to them,” according to Paul Vang, a Hmong immigrant who now lives in Orange County. Because the Hmong had no written language, the tapestries became a means for recording their stories.

Carol Goldstein, an enthusiast of folk art and textiles, began finding examples of what she and fellow collector Daphne Dennis call “war quilts” for sale in the United States, often through missionary-sponsored craft cooperatives.

They decided to begin actively seeking and collecting the works because they thought that, together, the quilts told a valuable part of the history of the Hmong, a history in which the United States played a large role.

“You can see that everyone tells the story differently,” Goldstein said. To allow the pieces to be dispersed among many different private collectors would dilute the collective value of the works, and then “this kind of folk history is gone,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein and Dennis began collecting the works in 1983, and in 1987 the first exhibit of their collection was displayed at the Long Beach Museum of Art. The Los Angeles-based collection has toured the country before returning to Southern California for the Fullerton show.

“We hope to keep this (exhibit) going,” Goldstein said, “to enable the Hmong to tell their side of the story, because history is a very complicated business.”

Most of the works on view were created in Thai refugee camps, although several were created by some of the tens of thousands of Hmong who came eventually to the United States. The story of their immigration is told in the tapestries, which include depictions of Hmong disembarking from passenger jets here.

Many of the quilts include brief phrases in rudimentary English, probably learned from relief workers or missionaries.

The pieces on display are “like epic tapestries,” said Lynn LaBate, exhibitions administrator for the Fullerton Museum Center. “The scale and scope of them is very impressive.”

To accompany the exhibit, the museum has planned several activities, including a concert of traditional Hmong music performed by Chue Chang on Friday, along with a lecture on Hmong musical tradition given by Amy Catlin of UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology. On Saturday, Pang Yang will give a quilt-making demonstration.

What: “Hmong War Quilts” exhibit and related events.

When: Exhibit on display through June 28. Hours: noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; till 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Traditional Hmong musical performance, Friday, June 12, at 8 p.m. Hmong quilt-making demonstration, Saturday, June 13, from 1 to 4 p.m.

Where: Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton.

Whereabouts: Take the Orange (57) Freeway to Chapman Avenue exit. Drive west to Pomona Avenue and turn left.

Wherewithal: Admission is $2 for adults, $1 for students and seniors, free for museum members and children under 12 (free to all visitors Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m.)

Where to call: (714) 738-6545.