Monday, April 14, 2025
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Annie Wong
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Images Festival, Toronto
Co-Presented with Gallery TPW, ASpace Gallery, and YYZ Artists’ Outlet
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ASL interpreters will be present throughout the entire performance and the following conversation between Annie Wong and Jaclyn Quaresma.
Photo documentation by Camille Rojas
Burial for a Hungry Ghost is a lecture-performance that stages a ceremonial farewell for Ghost Tape #10, a psychological warfare tool deployed by the US military during the Vietnam-American War. This sonic-spiritual weapon, designed to instill fear and psychological distress, becomes the spectral center of artist Annie Wong’s inquiry into sound as both a weapon and a vessel for memory, resistance, and mourning.
Through a series of encounters that traverse the divided landscapes of North and South Vietnam, the story-telling performance traces the ideological battlegrounds encoded in sound—propaganda Red music, banned Western music, and Buddhist chants. By weaving together these distinct registers, Burial for a Hungry Ghost listens for the echoes of past struggles reconciling the ways in which sound has been wielded to command, console, and control.
At its core, the work is an act of reckoning, both political and spiritual. As Annie stages the burial of this manufactured ghost, she simultaneously asks: How do we listen to history’s phantoms without becoming captive to them? Through this layered engagement with sound, video, and storytelling, Burial for a Hungry Ghost extends beyond historical documentation into a speculative ritual—one that gestures toward sonic and spiritual relief, remembrance, and the possibility of release.
Annie Wong
Annie Wong is an artist, writer, community organizer and curator. Annie’s practice is heavily collaborative and often engages communities to produce a collective form of carework as the basis for artistic production, allyship building, and spiritualism. She has widely exhibited across North America and has published in various art and poetry magazines. She was formerly the Curator of Programming and Public Engagement at Gallery TPW; a member of Friends of Chinatown Toronto; and currently serves on the board of Toronto Chinatown Land Trust.
Jaclyn Quaresma 