The Making of an Archive
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn
2018
The main catalyst for the initiation of Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen's project The Making of an Archive was the photo albums of the artist's father, an amateur photographer who took countless photographs of his daily life when he first immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. However, while doing research for her previous artworks, the lack of representation of the immigrant's daily life in state narratives seemed paradoxical for a country that is internationally known as the instigator of multiculturalism. Due to this visual deficiency and threat of photographic disintegration, Nguyen initiated The Making of an Archive, a project that seeks to collect images of everyday life photographed by migrants, particularly of people of colour, in a direct, collective, and exploratory approach. One of the salient themes of the work is how to make visible the rich histories of activism and solidarity that complicate the pervasive myth of the agreeable "model minority." This publication serves as a critical document of Nguyen's research and the project's relevance to larger conversations around Canadian vernacular photography by people of colour, the role of the artist-initiated archive, and how an expansion of the archival record relates to political and social change.
Identifier
2018.0621 THE D001Extent
155 pages : illustrations ; softcover 18 cmLanguage
ISBN
9781988708058Edition
Edition of 400Place of Publication
Vancouver, BCPublication Type
PrintPublisher
grunt galleryArtist
Jacqueline Hoàng NguyễnRelated program
The Making of an Archive (Related)Copyright 2018 grunt gallery, the artist, the writers and contributors.