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| TRADITIONAL MIEN COSTUMES |
Mien Needlework Group, purse, cotton fabric,
cotton thread tassels, beads, 7” x
14”,1999
Project
Title: Traditional Mien Costumes
Recipient Organization: Asian Community Mental Health Services
Lead Artist: Taen Linh Saelee and the Mien Needlework Group
Genre and Date Awarded: Traditional Arts, June 2003
To Be Completed: May-December 2005 in a series of exhibitions
In collaboration with Asian Community Mental
Health Services (ACMHS), Taen Linh Saelee and members of the Mien
Needlework
Group will create and present
four traditional Mien costumes. The project provides an opportunity for the
13 members of the needlework group to collaborate in new ways, and help to
preserve a textile tradition that is rarely practiced by the younger generation
of Mien women in the United States.
Most Mien families in the United States arrived in the 1980s and 1990s from refugee
camps in Thailand. Because they came from isolated farming regions of Laos, lacking
formal education and urban experience, negotiating everyday life in poor urban
neighborhoods in the United States has been extremely challenging. Many Mien
suffer from depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Mien Needlework
Group was formed by ACMHS to provide Mien women suffering from depression and
stress the opportunity to practice traditional arts, express themselves creatively,
and socialize. Currently they meet at the Neighborhood Learning Center, an ACMHS
satellite site in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland.
For their Creative Work Fund project, over a two-year period, lead artist Taen
Linh Saelee and the group members will make four works: an adult female costume,
an adult male costume, a boy costume, and a girl costume. The adult female costume
will be made of a Northern Laos style that includes pants, shirt, sash, turban,
and cape. The cape and turban will be elaborately decorated with silver ornamentation.
The male costume includes pants, shirt, sash, turban and some silver detailing.
The children’s costumes include hats, pants, shirts, and sashes.
Each group member will be responsible for making a particular piece of a costume.
Pieces will be kept at the group members’ homes and brought into the Neighborhood
Learning Center once a week to be worked on together. At the end of the first
year, Asian Community Mental Health Services will schedule a “meet the artists
at work” event at the Learning Center, providing an opportunity for Asian
youth to see the artistic process of this elaborate and time-consuming art form.
When finished, the costumes will be exhibited in local galleries.
Each member of the Mien Needlework Group has between thirty and forty years of
experience in traditional needlework. Each made her first pair of elaborately
embroidered pants, which can take up to a year to create, for her wedding ceremony.
Having learned different stitching patterns and techniques from their elders,
they can embroider both older and modern designs. They use an embroidery cross
stitch that is sewn from the back so that both sides of the piece can be of use.
The making of four traditional costumes will be the most in-depth and intense
collective expression of needlework and dressmaking the Mien Needlework Group
has undertaken. According to the lead artist, “Not only will we heavily
embroider various pieces of the costume, but we will get to sew with silver,
an opportunity we do not often have.”
Asian Community Mental Health Services was founded in 1974. Its mission is to
provide and advocate for multi-lingual and multicultural services that enable
people to lead healthy, contributing, and self-sufficient lives. Each year it
provides services in 12 languages to more than 3,000 immigrant and refugee children,
adolescents, adults, families, and seniors, the majority of whom live below the
poverty level.
Lead artist Taen Linh Saelee tells of her early life: “I was
born and raised in the remote mountains of Laos. I come from a culture
that does not have a written language and that practices slash and
burn farming as well as hunting and gathering as a source of living.
I was taught as a young girl to do needlework. I have more than 35
years of experience doing Mien embroidery. Throughout the years,
I have made several of my own traditional costumes, as well as quilts,
tablecloths, purses, and wallets for sale.”
Taen Linh Saelee and her family escaped to the refugee camps in Thailand in 1975.
They walked on foot for about a month before reaching the Thai border. She married
in the camp and had three children before coming to the United States with her
family in 1988.
Adjusting to life in the United States has been difficult. She was referred to
ACMHS by a doctor in 1996 and became a member of the Mien Needlework Group. Since
the inception of the needlework group in 1992, its members have made more than
100 pieces of traditional Mien embroidery, including 10 quilts, doll clothing,
handbags, and many other pieces. The group offers most of its pieces for sale
to help fund its activities.
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