Excited to present recent work to the Vanderbilt community.

Deslenguadas. Somos los del español deficient. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguisticmestizaje, the subject of your burla.Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huérfanos—we speak an orphan tongue.

– Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” 

Taming a Wild Tongue brings together recent bodies of work of Hương Ngô that span video, sound, works on paper, and publications that make material the oft invisible traces of living between languages. Drawing from performances, interviews, and archival research, Ngô lingers on moments ofuntranslatability as urgent reminders of displacement, colonial histories, and spaces of resistance. Invoking the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Taming a Wild Tonguecomplicates the double bind of traduttore, traditoreby foregrounding the argot and lived experiences of diaspora communities in the production of knowledge.

The exhibition will feature a publication with two newly commissioned essays by translator Dương Mạnh Hùngand Alejandro T. Acierto, Mellon Assistant Professor of Digital Art and New Media in the Department of Art and Program of Cinema & Media Arts at Vanderbilt University.

This exhibition and its additional programming are made possible with the generous support and partnership with the Vanderbilt University Programs of Asian Studies and Cinema & Media Arts.