White Light / Black Noise

by Huong Ngo

August 27 to September 23, 2017

Opening reception: Sunday, August 27 from 2-5PM

EXPO Art After Hours: Friday, September 15 from 6-9PM

Inspired by the concept of the backyard as territory of negotiating difference, Huong Ngo will create a site-specific sound installation for her solo exhibition at The Franklin that examines and archives the often invisible and unspoken aspects of growing up bilingually. For the project, Ngo interviewed nine participants, who grew up in bilingual or multilingual households, delving into how language is bound up in their sense of identity, belonging, perceptions of the world, and places in geopolitical histories. Ngo guides the participants through workshops using bird calls as scores for performative uses of their languages.

While the concept of white light is more familiar, black noise is the technical term for silence, but also describes a range of sounds that are just beyond human perception, thus asking what we might be missing when we are not attuned to what is not plainly visible.

Participants:

Yangchin Li
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Luis Alvaro Sahagun Nuño
Richard Gessert
Adrian Pijoan
Sunita Prasad
Faisal Aswat
Sarah Khalid Dhobhany
Puja Singh Patel

For EXPO Chicago Art After Hours, THE FRANKLIN will stay open late for a bonfire, barbecue, and storytelling event that examines the backyard barbecue as both important container for memories and precarious event in our current moment of violence against communities of color. Art After Hours is a citywide open gallery night inviting EXPO CHICAGO visitors and the Chicago community to experience the city’s vibrant art scene, including alternative exhibition venues and performance spaces, during extended hours on Friday, September 15, 6:00–9:00pm.

Hương Ngô is an artist born in Hong Kong and is currently based in Chicago. Her research-based practice explores collectivity, diasporic identities, and language, using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and often collaborative approach. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BFA, Fine Arts), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, Art & Technology), and was a studio fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program. She was recently awarded the Fulbright US Scholar Grant to realize a project (begun at the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in France and recently exhibited at DePaul Art Museum) that examines the colonial history of surveillance in Vietnam and the anti-colonial strategies of resistance vis-à-vis the activities of female organizers and liaisons. She has been awarded the DCASE Individual Artist Program Grant, the Chicago Artists Coalition BOLT residency, and will serve as a FIELD/WORK artist mentor for the 2017-18 season. She volunteers as an educator at the South-East Asia Center, which supports an inter-generational population of uptown Chicago’s immigrants and refugees.

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Tags: "White Light/Black Noise", Adrian Pijoan, Dock6collective, East Garfield Park, Edra Soto, Faisal Aswat, Hương Ngô, Luis Alvaro Sahagun Nuño, Puja Singh Patel, Richard Gessert, Sarah Khalid Dhobhany, Sunita Prasad, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Yangchin Li