The Midway Commons office building in St. Paul doesn’t look much like an art gallery. But last week, Commons tenant the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council opened its conference room doors to host the opening reception for Qhia Dab Neeg (“Storytelling”), a multidiscipline art show presented by the St. Paul-based arts advocacy group In Progress.
“What we wanted to do is promote Hmong artists and Hmong culture throughout the generations,” said artist Katherina Vang, who curated the show. “So however you express your culture or your ethnicity to you — that’s what we pretty much wanted from the artists. It was up to them to define it, or reveal it. Our [mission] is to promote local Hmong art.”
The exhibition of 20 works by 13 artists runs through February and showcases Hmong artists from Minnesota, California, Indiana and New Zealand.