Ghost Calligraphy

By Isola Tong

Description

Isola Tong enacts the performativity of Chinese script, and the haunting of Chinese ghosts as it relates to the early histories of Evergreen Cemetery. In a discussion of Chinese script, the philosopher Jacques Derrida writes: “Nonphonetic writing breaks the noun apart. It describes relations and not appellations.” Tong transforms her body—trans-femme, bi-cultural Filipino-Chinese—into an instrument of this writing, bringing these ghostly spirits into relation with the living.