Xang Mimi Ho

Baltimore, United States

About the Artist:
At age 10, Ho emigrated from Thailand to the United States with her mother and younger sister after her parents divorced. As an infant, Ho contracted a debilitating case of polio from an immunization overdose. To this day, she struggles with leg braces and the disease's other lifelong effects. Even so, her mother, like many immigrant parents who speak very little English, depends heavily upon her daughters. Ho says the decision to become a photographer and art teacher came easily. "Art helped me define who I am and find confidence in myself."

Artist's Statement:
I feel this body of work relates to the theme 'Exposed', because in my mind art is an act of revelation, an act of revealing a secret. My works are about exposing that part of myself that is so hard to talk about otherwise. Only through my photography am I able to let me viewer see the struggles within myself. Some have said art can be a tool for self-healing; for me art is a tool to find the wound.

My camera is the key to my secret garden, a magical place, a scared place, and a place where beauty is a blur and emotions are transformed into images. I try to depict what is not visible to the eye – investigate the unconscious mind, where hidden dreams and memories lie out of sight. An illness that I've had since I was very young manifests itself as an opression of the body over the mind.

In this body of work I tried to investigate the experience of being disabled. I was interested in this topic because of my disability. I contracted polio at the age of one and it has profoundly affected the way I think of myself, I always feel like I'm trapped in this body, trying hard to get out. In my photographs I examine how the exaggerations of emotion and the reality are altered through the camera. I employ my own body to create a narrative.

I am also interested in the body as a temporary container for our souls. The bodies that we are born with will eventually deterioirate, but perhaps what makes up our true self can persist. I want to capture the transitional stage between life and death of the body where physical beauty is not an actor and nothing is defined in concrete terms.