Canton Girl in the MET
2024
Archival B/W inkjet print on canvas, acrylic paint, plastic zip-ties
[The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2017.]
Re-coloring the Canton Girl photograph with zip ties, I question the power and representation of this colonial imagery, as well as the shifting symbols intertwined with the complex intersections of socio-political history, material culture, and gender identity.
In search of traces of Hong Kong—my home—within foreign fabrics in a museum collection, the results I find feel distant. The photograph is dated 1868, with an inscription on the back: 'Canton Girl showing hair. Hong Kong, China.'
I respond to the limitations of early photographic techniques—the impossibility of recording colors. This work negotiates with the novelty, power, and violence involved in the representation, tracing the history of young women's slavery in Hong Kong.