ABOUT
Penmai Chongtoua
(Sensei Mai) is a second generation Hmong-American woman with Indigenous roots to Southeast Asia.
Her aim is to reconcile severed relationships between Earth and humans through a series of intimate rituals of care and reciprocity that are inspired by a transmutation of dense energy and harmful material culture.
This manifests broadly in Penmai's practice by creating a survey of different environmental artifacts that articulate contemporary pathways of sustaining one another and the more-than-human world.
Though her specific modes of communication vary --- she has worked with painting, poetry and textiles to illuminate her efforts toward an environmental symbiosis --- more recently, her practices have included installations made from raw-earth soils and performance as a means of public activation.
Her methodology of facilitating exchanges between material culture, object engagement and embodied education through natural materials to broader objectives of environmental understanding is further facilitated by her appointment with the Natural Materials Lab, where she is a faculty researcher, which focuses on speculative earth and bio-based material design.
Penmai received her M.A. in Climate, Earth and Society from Columbia University in 2022 and her B.A. in Environmental Politics from Brown University in 2019. Penmai has received grants from GSAPP, the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and has presented her work with institutions such as Central Saint Martins and Pioneer Works.
Upcoming Residency:
Artist Specialist with Cottonwood Gulch
Previous Exhibition:
‘Transcorporeal Feminism’ at the Indian Ceramics Triennale
︎ pc2913@columbia.edu
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