The Opposite of Looking Is Not Invisibility. The Opposite of Yellow Is Not Gold

This chapter documents a conversation between the two artists, Hương Ngô and Hồng-Ân Trương, in which they unpack the process, history, and theoretical framework of their project, The opposite of looking is not invisibility. The opposite of yellow is not gold on the occasion of its exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This project reframes vernacular family photography from their experiences as Vietnamese American women growing up in the United States in order to unveil the invisibility that undergirds narratives of the Asian American experience. In this project, the artists alternately selected the family photographs that they re-photographed, with excerpts from congressional hearings in the 1970s about the Vietnamese refugee crisis, printed as laser etches on paper, to show concretely how the nation was framing people like their families and more specifically, to show how bodies like theirs were being understood in economic terms of labor and resources. In this chapter, they elaborate on these two seemingly disparate threads: the invisible narratives of Asian American families and the broader national imperative in which war, the economy, and labor are bound up with each other, and discuss their working process as long-time collaborators and friends.