Canton Girl in the MET

2024

Archival B/W inkjet print on canvas, plastic zip-ties, acrylic paint

31.5 x 51x 5 inches

 

The portrait of a Canton Girl standing in profile holding an umbrella, dated 1868, found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is re-coloured using plastic zip-ties in an embroidery-like manner. The work traces the history of female emigration across the Pacific Ocean and delves into the girl slavery history between Hong Kong, a British colonial port city, and America in the 19th century.

 

The museum's description focuses solely on the technical reproduction of the portrait as an economical keepsake, erasing its historical context and the identity of its subject. In response to this absence in institutional narratives on race, class, and gender, I recolor all the ornaments on the girl as critique to the disappearance of history. The tension and distortion created in this process and material embody my exploration of who she might be.

 

I question the representations and shifting symbols intertwined with the complex intersections of socio-political histories through re-colourization and material obstruction.

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[ Image credit: The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2017.]