In and around Luang Prabang
By Tessa Bunney on 4 September 2012Yesterday I arrived in Luang Prabang to be artist-in-residence at the wonderful Project Space. It’s lovely to be back here. I’m sitting in my room in the gallery with the fan on full blast at 10pm – it hasn’t rained today and it is still so HOT, I swear my eyeballs are sweating!!
As a start to my project about the relocation of villages, at times a somewhat controversial issue in Laos, I spent today visiting Hmong minority villages around Luang Prabang with the aim of making portraits of the women who make and sell Hmong inspired items to tourists at Luang Prabang’s famous night market.
Night market, Luang Prabang
Ban Na Ouane
The Hmong have recently settled in the town of Luang Prabang – a consequence of the governments efforts to suppress both the cultivation of opium poppies and slash and burn agriculture, which they have traditionally practiced, and of their own desire to take advantage of the expansion of tourism, which provides an outlet for their crafts.
Presently, about 200 Hmong women have made this choice, seeing a better life and a better future for their children in abandoning their long past life in the mountains and starting a new life based on craft.
Francis Engelmann, The Quiet in the Land
Tomorrow, we are heading for the hills to visit one of the villages where many of these women and their families relocated from several years ago.