Musquiqui Chihying
Berlin/Taipei

Something as banal as the dental hygiene products found on the shelves of a country’s supermarkets can be telling of that society’s perceptions of others. This is the basis of Musquiqui Chihying’s pair of monochromatic photographs that make up The Toothpaste (2019). One half of the work depicts a dash of white toothpaste, freshly squeezed from a tube branded Darlie (known in Chinese-speaking countries as heiren yagao, “black person toothpaste”), with a notorious logo based on black-face performers such as Al Jolson, while the second image features a black dollop of Whiteman Toothpaste (bairen yagao). Through this work, Chihying points to the embedment of racial stereotypes in products that circulate within the Asian market, and the unbridled perpetuation of problematic cultural appropriations.