Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Archival Documents, 2017
Photographs
Courtesy of the artist
The passport, photographs, and documents
from the National Overseas Archives in Aix-enProvence, France, reproduced here depict Nguyễn
Thị Minh Khai, one of the most notable women in
Vietnamese revolutionary history and the central
figure of the exhibition. After years of working
with Vietnamese Communist leader Hồ Chí Minh
in Hong Kong, she returned to Vietnam to oppose
the French government and lead the anti-colonial
movement. The French National police captured
her in 1940 and executed her by firing squad
along with other anti-colonists. While schools,
streets, and hotels in Vietnam bear her name, the
historical record of Minh Khai is thin and stitched
together from bits of information salvaged
from French police reports and interrogation
documents. Hương Ngô’s research of Minh Khai
serves not to close the gaps in the historical
record, but to explore the absences and find new
ways to tell the impossible stories of gender,
colonialism, and violence contained in them.