Anime Wong
10 images Created 9 Oct 2021
"Wrong Wong" was created as a reaction to the rise in racism and hate incidents against Asian Americans in the United States in the aftermath of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. Utilizing additive and subtractive color theory, and printmaking techniques, I constructed a multi-step process to add color onto archival black and white photographs of the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong (b. 1905). I reproduce the archival photograph onto acetate in cyan, magenta, yellow and black; apply paint on the image; and materially superimpose these results from the identical source image to create an entirely new image. This experimental printmaking process plays with the metamorphosis of color and the mutation of portraiture as a metaphor for the pathological social construction of race. The resultant multi-layered work combines history, nostalgia, and the accidental to allude to the complicated multiplicity of identity in being Chinese-American. “Wrong Wong” aims to sabotage the logic of color theory and subvert the “objective” clarity of photographic portraiture to create a more complex and enigmatic presentation of Asian-American identity.