Ka Oskar Ly

MFA Sculpture

Archives of the Future

Ka Oskar Ly (we/they/she/peb/nws/nwg) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer whose practice moves between sculptural arrangement and collective presence. As a HMong Queer immigrant and daughter of refugees, they live as both kin and stranger. Belonging by lineage, estranged by displacement, their practice works to repair fractures and reimagine kinship. Searching for wonder and joy.

In HMong, there are no direct translations for 'art' or 'queer.' Their expansive significance exceeds the container of a single word. The work materializes that significance through form, ritual, and ancestral technologies.

Materials, as much as community, are collaborators with agency and history. They refuse relations that are rushed and demand a presence the world rarely makes room for. Ka uses natural materials such as hemp, indigo, silver, plant life alongside plastics and other artifice of the conditions we live within. These elements reference HMong dressmaking vernacular, one of the most ancient records of its people.

What begins as dressing the body becomes garments for invisible geographies. To tend to them is to trust a timeline we do not set. To make room for what cannot be controlled.

Through re-assemblage, they recompose ruptured diaspora ways of knowing, memory, and lineage. No two works draw from exactly the same mix. Objects migrate between projects, remixed in new contexts, each continuing a conversation across distance and defying time.

Familiarity with the work is not required. It is the beginning.

Even in the absence of the body, presence lingers.

$Dried bamboo and metal sculptures with tiny lights hang over a baby banana tree, casting refracted light in a dark room.$

Detail chain-textured cement form, partially silver over gray, surrounded by mirrors, faintly etched with Hmong batik patterns. A silver-gray hand emerges from one mirror, reaching toward the cement in an ambiguous gesture of embrace or pull.

Tso Mus
2024
16 x 40 x 8"
Cement, glass, polyurethane, silver

Floor-to-ceiling white cotton draped like a runner, marked with indigo body prints. Backlit to reveal a person's shadow silhouette with a heart-shaped glass above at the center, with dried soil and plants beneath.

Close up of red herbal leaf planted in soil nestled in a glass hand mounted on a wood base, set against indigo-dyed white fabric hung vertically.

Hla Mus
2025
10’ x 5’ x 3’
Organic indigo painted cotton using the artist’s body, wood, bamboo branches, glass, LED lights, dried soil, dried HMong Tshuaj Rau Qaib plant leaf variety remains, Ying’s shadow, and light.

Batik-patterned altar covered in black rice and protective talismans, flanked by live herbs and banana leaves. Two separate pedestals display a woven vessel and a neon-lit batik cube with plants.

Angled side detail view of Batik-patterned altar covered in black rice and protective talismans, flanked by live herbs and banana leaves.

Nrhiav Tshuaj Rau Qaib | Nrhav Tshuaj Rau Qab - Hu Suab
2025
5’ x 4’ x 6" altar, 12” x 12” neon cube, 12 “ x 5“ x 14” plant in a woven basket
Banana leaves, black rice, live HMong Tshuaj Rau Qaib plant leaves from the Xiong family, Nkauj Fa batik pattern abstracted from Yeeb Haam Khaab, pomelo, cement, acrylic, metal, Joss paper, incense, plastic, mirror glass, Lao silkworm cocoon, cork, gifted protective talismans (seeds sachet and sage-filled abalone shell from the ILI Family, evil eye hand braided bracelet from Uzer’s Eid, blessing strings and joss paper boat from Joua Lee Grande’s project.
Soundscape of Pepper’s heartbeat, waters, metals, kwv txhiaj by Tiffany Xiong, and prayer song by Padmashri Saravanan.

$In a dark room, a baby banana tree on the left has video projected onto it, casting refracted light across the walls. Above, metal sculptures with curled dried bamboo leaves and tiny lights hang overhead,$

Detail shot of a video projection of a baby banana tree intermittently shaking overlays a live banana tree plant in darkness.

Ua Pa
2025
15’ x 30’ Installation
Banana plant from Tais Vue Moua Yang and Yawm Txiv Nyiaj Pov Yang (Providence, RI), projection of a video of banana tree blessing, dried bamboo leaves, aluminum, silver plated chains from Paaj Yaaj and the village of Pa Klang (Thailand), grass broom gathered from 2026 HMong New Year, Providence, mylar, LED lights, pandan scented mist, with soundscape of breathwork, Atlantic ocean water, ring tone, and 2026 Minnesota HMong New Year coins.

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