Hương Ngô: To Name It is to See It

In this new body of work, Hương Ngô engages with the surveillance archives of Vietnamese anticolonial organizer Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to reframe the connections among language, gender, and visuality, refracted through the lens of post-colonial subjectivity. The role of performance in the construction of identity is at the forefront of Ngô’s investigation of this historical figure. Minh Khai’s constant crossing of borders – those of nation-states, ethnicities, languages, genders, and classes – via her numerous pseudonyms and disguises, was key to her invisibility to authorities yet renders her difficult to classify even today.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website