Ming Wong

Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s performative and multimedia art practice seeks to expose stereotypes, omissions, and received wisdoms. Wong often transforms his physical self by taking on multiple personas or characters, splicing his performances with those of the original source. In these sliding-door moments Wong opens up a space for discussion of representation, often revealing sub-texts or exposing fault lines.

Wong has a Diploma of Fine Arts (Chinese Art) from Nanyang Academy, Singapore (1995) and an MFA (Fine Art Media) from the Slade School of Art, University College London (1999). Based in Berlin, his practice often calls attention to European and American popular culture. For Next Year/ L’Année Prochaine/明年 (2015) Wong transposes himself into the avant-garde French film L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961). Playing both the male and female parts, the artist questions the traditional Western heterosexual male role as he inserts his Asian identity into this very European film, itself famous for techniques of shifting frames, non-sequential narratives, and repetition designed to express the protagonists’ thought processes. As Wong manipulates the footage of the original, he creates another layer of slippage.

In his work Angst Essen/Eat Fear (2008), Wong intervenes in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Angst Essen Seele Auf (1974), with its storyline of a transgressive romantic relationship between an older German woman and a young Arab man. As Wong takes on every role in the film, the narrative and dialogue of prejudice and ostracization is neutered, rendered obsolete and foolish by Wong’s omnipresence. In a world where everyone looks the same, the original storyline literally makes no sense. Wong’s mimicry pulls pointedly at the seams as he takes to task received ideas about character roles and their signifiers.

For HT22 Wong is exhibiting a new iteration of Bloody Marys—Song of the South Seas (2018), an installation featuring a single-channel video, the artist’s archive of photographs, annotated music scores, and cinema ephemera, among other items. The character of Bloody Mary in the musical South Pacific (1949) and film of the same name (1958) is a shrewd and feisty Vietnamese woman who makes a living from trading with the American sailors stationed on nearby islands. The role was played in both the musical and the later film by African-American actor Juanita Hall (for the film her voice is dubbed by another Black actor, Muriel Smith). Wong’s work weaves his own rendition of Bloody Mary with that from the original film and those found in internet footage of amateur musical productions. A variety of Black, Asian, Pacific Island, and non-white actors play Bloody Mary in the various clips, highlighting the othering of the character. In Wong’s own dramatic hamming up of Bloody Mary he seeks to call attention to the negative racial stereotyping that anchors some of the original character’s repugnant qualities.