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 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 and mapping 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 biomaterial design, painting, and site-specific installation to illuminate her efforts toward an environmental symbiosis --- more recently her practice involves understanding the cultural, political and ecological implications of biomaterial migratory patterns moving from Asia to the U.S.
Penmai is currently a PhD candidate in Geography & Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She received her M.A. in Climate, Earth and Society from Columbia University and her B.A. in Environmental Politics from Brown University. Penmai has received grants from Columbia GSAPP, the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and has contributed her work at the Institue for Advanced Architecture at Catalonia, the Venice Biennale, and Central Saint Martins.
Upcoming
Competition Juror for the 2025 Annual Biodesign Challenge Summit
June 12-13th at the Parsons School of Design and MoMa
︎ penmai@hawaii.edu
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