Event Details - Untitled (Entitled) Exhibition

Untitled (Entitled) 

Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn

Untitled (Entitled) is a text-based installation that is an extension of Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn’s exploration on the ideological construction of white-colonial settler multiculturalism and its mechanisms. In a study titled “Why Do Some Employers Prefer to Interview Matthew, but Not Samir? New Evidence from Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver,” scholars Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Dechief reveal that employers in these cities are nearly 35% more likely to call back a job applicant with a Western European name than someone with a name common in minority and Indigenous groups, regardless of the applicant’s experience. Although Canada perceives itself as a leader of multiculturalism, Oreopoulos & Dechief’s numbers show a gaping contradiction, specifically in regards to employment equity. 

Starting in 2012, Nguyễn has been conducting interviews with migrants to understand the rationale behind the adoption of an English homologue of their given name. These interviews have been translated through an installation where each subject is represented by a lenticular panel and mounted on a mobile structure. Lenticular lenses are used commonly for advertising billboards and allow the presentation of two images embedded in one, creating an optical flip effect.” Depending on the viewing angle of the audience, the lenticular shows one image merging into another, which then creates an illusion of animation. For the exhibition, both the adopted and mother tongue names of the interviewed subjects are printed on the lenticulars, oscillating back and forth in reaction to movement within the gallery. 

The objective of Untitled (Entitled) is to make visible the uneven linguistic and colonial translations culturally marginalized groups perform every day, by revealing the permeable strategies of Western society. Language, as used in this exhibition, exposes the fictional, misleading, and individual character of naming practices, making evident the limits of national multiculturalism.

This installation of Untitled (Entitled) has been organized by Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Studies Jennifer Pranolo in connection with the course “Race as Medium.”