Huong Ngo: Ungrafting

Ngô tackles the legacy of French colonialism in Vietnam through its invasive introduction of foreign trees and grafts

Huong Ngô (born 1979) is a Hong Kong–born artist based in Santa Barbara. Her conceptual, research-based practice often takes the form of installation, printmaking and nontraditional mediums. Ungrafting looks at histories of colonial violence, specifically French colonialism in Vietnam, as well as resistance movements, through image-making, translations and material investigations. Ngô turns to a series of early 20th-century photographs showing foreign trees and tree grafts planted in Vietnam by the French. For the artist, grafting—a procedure that involves cutting and splicing different species into a single plant—serves as a powerful metaphor for the physical violence inherent in colonialism. An essay by Justin Quang Nguyên Phan, and conversations between Ngô and Aline Lo and Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Chadwick Allen, reflect on the connection between Ngô’s exhibition and global anticolonialism, the trans-Indigenous and the role of the archive in artistic production.