Hauntings and specters make an appearance in Yaj’s everyday experiences because Hmong history, culture, and the legacy of statelessness are believed to be topics that have settled since the Vietnam War. For some, the narratives are rooted in the past and are over and done with, yet for her, they become visible in gestures, performance, images, language and in objects. The current project Hnav Hmoob, Wear Hmong, is photographs, performative, and installation that explores social and cultural changes in everyday Hmong textile practices.

Guided by a set of performative rules, Yaj dresses in everyday clothing or ris tsho or khaub ncaws hmoob, specifically clothing that is gifted to her from family and friends. The majority of the dress style represented in her photographs mimics the regional dress of the Hmong living in the Xieng Khouang province in Laos. The fashion style was popular from the mid 1900s-present day, and is also the dress style of her family. Hnav HMoob, Wear HMong is about confronting questions of loss, erasure, and invisibility that stem from change. It seeks to create a shift in the Hmong social imagination, challenging the colonial, white Western, and patriarchal gazes in the construction of the traditionally clothed female figure. Hnav HMoob, Wear HMong uses questioning and embodied methodologies as a generative process to make visible the specters in the Hmong identity and to create alternative ways to think beyond the limits of what is already existing in the representation of Hmong.