04/05/2026
Congratulations to Prof. Justin Phan on the publication of his article, “Race Graft: Decolonial Relations in Hương Ngô’s French Indochina and Beyond” in
Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience
View the article here:
https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/44922
This essay analyzes a 2024 exhibition by contemporary artist Hương Ngô called Ungrafting, which presents a series of photographs and other multimedia experiments that index a history of French agronomists and botanists in French Indochina, present-day Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Ngô complicates inherited definitions of grafting that depict it as a solely scientific and botanical method of conjoining two plants and instead identifies its poetic resonance across other topics of study such as photography, anatomy, geography, history, race, and empire.
The essay situates Ngô’s exploration of French Indochina within Asian/America and argues that her exhibition reveals the work of “race graft,” defined as the technocratic and aesthetic consolidation of racial matter and forms within and beyond the human. Tracing how the project of race graft translates into other mediums such as images, skin, rust, and soil, this essay ultimately illustrates how Ngô’s aesthetic draws on art, poetics, and installation to engage a feminist science and technological critique that crafts as it grafts, creating a language to draw dynamic geographies of relation, and contribute to a growing number of gestures invested in a decolonizing aesthetic for how we envision Asian/America in our world.
Prof. Justin Phan is an Assistant Professor in Global Asian Studies
IMAGE ID: Graphic congratulatory card featuring Justin Phan in the center with the word CONGRATULATIONS above the photo. Background is purple with a yellow sunburst. There is a QR code on the top left corner for program information and GLAS logo on the top right corner. GLAS social media handles and office address and phone number is listed at the bottom.