Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyêễn, Space Fiction & the Archives, 2012. Film and installation. Courtesy of VOX: Centre de l’image contemporaine.
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (b. 1979, Côte-des-Neiges QC) engages with archives, seeking out evidence of activism and citizen-led solidarity networks within state-sanctioned narratives. Through her work, specific histories of migration, labour and feminist organizing are refracted and re-imagined through the media of the present day. Nguyêễn bridges radical histories with a future-looking lens, employing elements of science fiction (as in Space Fiction and the Archives, 2012), ambient space-rock (The Wages Due Song, 2016) and speculative archives (The Making of an Archive, ongoing since 2014). Throughout, the artist resists the totalizing effects of the traditional archive, opting instead to create works of stickiness and grit; her works give texture to radical histories and their implications on widely held cultural assumptions of national identity and civic engagement. Nguyêễn’s research has explored holdings in the National Film Board, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Library and Archives Canada and the archives of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm.
All images courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted.
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyêễn, Research log for Space Fiction & the Archives, 2012. Artist’s Private Notebook Collection.
Research document from University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections.
Wages for Housework Committee letter from the CBC. University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections, Fonds 10-008, box 2, file 5.
Lyrics for “The Wages Due Song” . University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections, Fonds 10-008, box 2, file 5.
Breastfeeding log. Artist’s Private Notebook Collection.