Zhiwan Cheung

In “Reading the Rainbow,” multiple figures, painted in Chinatown Orange, interact with abstract shapes also painted in Chinatown Orange. Narrated over the film is a creation myth of Glidden Paints’ paint names. The myth covers a long list of colors, culminating with the birth of Chinatown Orange. These colors were chosen because their names contained words with specific cultural elements or referenced a particular place. Separating and segregating the list of colors, the myth pulls ideas from other creation myths and texts from Jacques Derrida’s “On the Name,” Johann Wolfgang von Gothe’s “Theory of Colours,” Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets,” and David Batchelor’s “Chromophobia.” In utilizing the language of body, place, and structure, the film becomes a metaphor for the difficulty in classification, categorization, and the act of naming.