Candice Kwan
These works are part of Kwan's Wrong Wong Project in which "Anna May Wong becomes a Rorschach test for examining the historical ambivalence towards and pathological perceptions of Asian-Americans in the United States.”
“In Anime Wong, I wanted to reclaim the notion of Asian-American identity using the Chinese American actress Anna May Wong (1905-61) as a muse. Utilizing archival black and white photographs of Anna May Wong, I developed an experimental printmaking process that plays with mutations of color and superimpositions of the same portrait upon itself. The process becomes a metaphor for the historical ambivalence towards and pathological perceptions of Asian-Americans in the United States. Anime Wong aims to sabotage the logic of color theory and subvert the “objective” clarity of photographic portraiture to create a more kaleidoscopic and enigmatic presentation of Asian-American identity.”
About the Artist
Candice Kwan is a New York-based artist, born in Hong Kong, who uses photographic images across multiple media (painting, photography, printmaking, video) to confront contemporary issues of representation of women and of Asian Americans. Her work critiques the politics of historical tropes and imagines new feminist iconographies and visual narratives for Asian Americans.
Website: https://www.candicekwan.com
Instagram: @candicekwan