white vegetable

white vegetable is a series of single-take 16mm films that explore the racially melancholic processes of fixation, ingestion, repulsion, and regurgitation. In Chinese, the direct translation for napa cabbage (baicai 白菜) is white vegetable.  In Melancholy and Race, Anne Anlin Cheng remarks: “since the melancholic subject experiences resentment and denigration for the lost object with which he or she is identifying, the melancholic ends up administering to his or her own self-denigration.” She continues to elaborate that ìthe melancholic is not melancholic because he or she has lost something but because he or she has introjected that which he or she now reviles,” resulting in the melancholic “choking on...the hateful and loved thing he or she just devoured.”