To Name It Is to See It

To Name It Is To See It

Archive-based Research and Project.
Press Release
2017

From Exhibition Essay, written by Faye Gleisser:

It was her handwriting that ultimately gave her away.

Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, one of the most celebrated, enigmatic female figures in Vietnamese revolutionary history, was found guilty in 1940 of conspiring against the colonial government when a letter she had authored under the alias “F.L.” was intercepted and analyzed by the Sûreté, the French National Police. In August 1941, Minh Khai and several other leaders of the anticolonial movement were executed by firing squad under the aegis of the French government’s recently instituted ban of the Communist party.

Interdisciplinary artist Hương Ngô’s newest body of research-based artwork, in the exhibition To Name It Is to See It at the DePaul Art Museum, synthesizes these absences and the politics of the colonial record. Rather than repair, and thereby efface, these gaps, her work—which spans installation, sound, video, performance, photography, and printmaking—makes materially manifest the discursive and collective historical process of ideology formation: the making and unmaking of Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, the event.

View the Exhibition Publication

From Lori Waxman, Chicago Tribune:

The Vietnamese language does not have a word for feminism.

But the country did and does have feminists, including Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, a revolutionary leader of the Indochinese Communist Party in the 1930s. Her elusive figure lurks everywhere and nowhere in "To Name It is to See It," a solo exhibition by Huong Ngo upstairs at the DePaul Art Museum.

...

Despite having delved into archives in Vietnam and France, Ngo, whose Vietnamese-Chinese family took refuge in the U.S. a few months after she was born in 1979, can't fix the gaps in the deplorably lacking historical record of Minh Khai. Instead she makes them manifest, reproducing French translations of intercepted letters by laser-cutting them into onionskin paper. The typescript words appear as negative space against a background of teak, a wood introduced to Vietnam by the French at the turn of the last century. A series of all-white puckered drawings bear invisible marks painted with a brush dipped in boiled-rice water, a popular espionage technique of the time. (Displayed adjacent is the iodine solution that makes such transcriptions visible.) An exhibition case filled with common items that would have been used by anti-colonial organizers for coded communication includes, in addition to a scarf and a kitchen strainer, a 3-D-printed buffalo horn, since the original proved inaccessible.

From B. David Zarley, New City Chicago:

Important, heart-rending, and elucidating, Huong Ngô’s “To Name It Is To See It” feels like nothing less than conceptual magic.The artist’s largest museum presentation to date, it is a show which paradoxically manages to be both freighted with import—themes as heavy as dying stars—and suffused with information but minimal in its presentation. It is approachable and democratic in its design and delivery, a light expression of unbearable being, a funeral shroud or flag. A materially rich distillation of Ngô’s research into the life of 1930s Vietnamese anti-colonial activist Nguyen Thi Minh Khai—done in France and Vietnam—the show both presents the challenges faced by Minh Khai, whipsawed by the colonial government and by the sexism of her rebellious peers, as well as echoes, via themes of spying and surveillance, colonialism and feminism, issues which continue to suffuse the global atmosphere today.

There is a kind of visual reportage to this thoroughly researched and immaculately presented exhibition, with meaning and knowledge infused in every work. The type used in “Proposal for a Translation,” specially designed by Giang Nguyen for the printing of specially commissioned translations of “feminism,” make the very language of the show bespoke. The “In Passing” series consists of two shirts which share their pattern with a mural from the Palace de Porte Dorée, now the Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris. One, a reproduction of a mandarin shirt of the kind Minh Khai wore in photographs circulated by the authorities, blends perfectly into its background, just as the revolutionary did when she subsumed herself in the colonial fabric of Vietnam, hiding as a male skirt maker. The other, set further from the camouflage, has its hidden pockets on view in the light of the gallery; the discovery of plans in such pockets were what led to Minh Khai’s execution.

In the thin hallway gallery adjacent to the bulk of the show, prints made with the obsolete hectographic method—the kind used by the anti-colonial activists—use agar-agar, a common Asian dessert ingredient, to display English, Vietnamese and French iterations of the pro-immigration rallying cry “We are here because you were there.” The artist’s royal purple agitprop hangs over the observer’s heads like Damocles’ sword, a powerful reminder that history is written in blood and spoken through the gnashing of teeth. One leaves the show with eyes open, but blurred by now-knowing tears.

See Article

Left to Right:

Letter from agent “LESQUENDIEU”
Letter about agent “LESQUENDIEU”
Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to Hồng (page 1)
Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to Hồng (page 2)
Laser cut onion-skin paper on a teak backing, framed.
10.5 x 15 x 1 in
2017

Who Owns the Light
Archival pigment print on silk organza, neon
6 x 12 x 3.5 ft.
2017

Proposals for a Translation
Lasercut wooden stamp set with custom typeface (in collaboration with Giang Nguyễn), newspaper (including contributions from Ash Mayfair, Nguyễn Hồ Mỹ Tâm, Viet Nguyen, Do Tuong Linh, Anonymous, Phuong Nguyen, Nau, Nhung Walsh, Uyên Chi Olivia Ngọc Nguyễn, My Do, Linh Tom and Ratatouille, Lien Truong, đức, lêna, and Nguyễn Quốc Thành, with translation by Dương Mạnh Hùng), custom vitrine
Custom Vitrine (44 x 18 x 42.25 in), Newspaper (22 x 33 in)
2017

Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to fellow organizer Lý Ứng Thuận (page 1)
Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to fellow organizer Lý Ứng Thuận (page 2)
Laser cut onion-skin paper on a teak backing, framed.
10.5 x 15 x 1 in
2017

Left to Right:

In Passing I
Archival pigment print on silk habotai, custom armature
73 x 42 in
2017

To Say Her Name
Music stand, accordian-bound book of laser cut performance scores
50 x 19 x 19 in
2017

Note from Local Chief of Police Services, Saigon about A. Woong, alias Mai…Ngoc Anh (page 2)
Laser cut onion-skin paper on a teak backing, framed.
10.5 x 15 x 1 in
2017

Proposals for a Translation Lasercut wooden stamp set with custom typeface (in collaboration with Giang Nguyễn), newspaper (including contributions from Ash Mayfair, Nguyễn Hồ Mỹ Tâm, Viet Nguyen, Do Tuong Linh, Anonymous, Phuong Nguyen, Nau, Nhun

To Say Her Name
Music stand, accordian-bound book of laser cut performance scores
50 x 19 x 19 in
2017

Existing Surveillance Photographs, List of Aliases, and Forged Chinese Passport for Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai (Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer)
Archival Pigment Prints on MOAB Metallic Silver
10 x 13.6 in
2017

Existing Surveillance Photographs (detail) (Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer)
Archival Pigment Prints on MOAB Metallic Silver
10 x 13.6 in
2017

Up Against the State
Invisible ink on sulphite pulp paper mounted directly on wall , framed bottle of iodine
Framed Bottle of Iodine (5 x 7 x 3 in), (9 pages) 21 x 31 in. each.
2017

Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to Comrades or Các Anh (Brothers) (page 1)
Letter from Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai to Comrades or Các Anh (Brothers) (page 2)
Laser cut onion-skin paper on a teak backing, framed.
10.5 x 15 x 1 in
2017

In Passing I
Archival pigment print on silk habotai, custom armature
73 x 42 in
2017

Left to Right:

Her Name Escapes Me
Hand-Embroidered Pillow (In collaboration with Phương Linh Nguyễn), mirror, custom armature
18 x 18 x 46 in
2017

Note from Local Chief of Police Services, Saigon about A. Woong, alias Mai…Ngoc Anh (page 1)
Note from Local Chief of Police Services, Saigon about A. Woong, alias Mai…Ngoc Anh (page 2)
Laser cut onion-skin paper on a teak backing, framed.
10.5 x 15 x 1 in
2017

Signals from a Hidden Kitchen
Four-channel sound installation (in collaboration with Nhung Nguyễn), kitchen objects, 3D-printed water buffalo horn and 3D-printed bamboo drum, archival pigment print on silk chiffon scarf, custom armature
44 x 18 x 42.25 in
2017

In Passing II
Archival pigment print on silk habotai and silk organza, custom armature
73 x 42 in
2017

Her Name Escapes Me
Hand-Embroidered Pillow (In collaboration with Phương Linh Nguyễn), mirror, custom armature
18 x 18 x 46 in
2017

Having Been Lost in Plain View
Performers: Linh Ngo, Hai Yen Nguyen, Hai Duong Nguyen, Van Pham, Hương Ngô
Voiceover: Vu Tran, Nhung Walsh
Single channel digital video
Color, sound
6:48
2017

Her Name Escapes Me
Hand-Embroidered Pillow (In collaboration with Phương Linh Nguyễn), mirror, custom armature
18 x 18 x 46 in
2017

Having Been Lost in Plain View
Performers: Linh Ngo, Hai Yen Nguyen, Hai Duong Nguyen, Van Pham, Hương Ngô
Voiceover: Vu Tran, Nhung Walsh
Single channel digital video
Color, sound
6:48
2017

We are here because you were there.
Chúng tôi ở đây vì quí vị đã ở đó.
Nous sommes ici parce que vous étiez là-bas.
Installation of hectograph prints and hand-cut paper with custom typeface, theater lights
2016 – 2017