Archival Document

Name/Title

Archival Document

Entry/Object ID

2017.14d

Description

Typewriter text document with red and blue writing on top

Context

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.

Acquisition

Accession

2017.12-14

Source or Donor

Ngô, Hương

Acquisition Method

Purchase

Credit Line

Courtesy of the artist

Made/Created

Artist

Ngô, Hương

Date made

2017

Ethnography

Notes

Vietnam France North American

Lexicon

Getty AAT

Concept

government (political concept), political concepts, social science concepts, security, safety-related concepts, functional concepts (general)

Hierarchy Name

Associated Concepts (hierarchy name)

Facet

Associated Concepts Facet

LOC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

Archives, Government, Colonialism, Revolutionaries

Dimensions

Dimension Description

overall

Width

13-5/8 in

Length

10 in