Ming Wong (Chinese: 黄汉明; pinyin: Huáng Hànmíng) is a Singaporean contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin, known for his re-interpretations of iconic films and performances from world cinema in his video installations, often featuring "miscastings" of himself in roles of varied identities.
[10] The palazzo was made to echo a cinema, with billboards by cinema billboard painter Neo Chon Teck 'advertising' the three featured video installations: Four Malay Stories (2005); In Love for the Mood (2009); and Life of Imitation (2009), alongside invited artworks by cine-memorabilia collector Wong Han Min, and filmmaker Sherman Ong.
[4][3] Together, the body of works examined the complexities of ethnic, racial, and linguistic identities across geographies, histories, and cultures as represented through cinema.
For instance, the video installation, Life of Imitation (2009), featured three actors that corresponded to the three main ethnic groups in Singapore (Chinese, Malay, and Indian), each alternating roles to play both a black mother and her 'white' daughter, particularly in a scene where the latter is fervently denying her roots.
[13] Dubbed as a form of "pla(y)giarism" by writer Kathy Acker, Wong often plays all the roles, male and female, as a means of re-examining the Western cinematic canon as a queer Asian man.
[8] Wong has examined the visual tropes and conventions from the oeuvres of directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, P. Ramlee, Douglas Sirk, Ingmar Bergman, and Roman Polanski; his practice thus examining the construction of subjectivity and geography through filmic representation.
[8][16] Wong's poor command of the Malay language is foregrounded, with the artist attempting his lines several times in repeated takes of the same scene.
Edited to simulate being shot on black-and-white film stock, the subtitles show a transcription of the artist's lines in Malay, alongside a literal English translation.
[2] He was awarded the Fire Station Residency and Bursary by ACME Studios, UK in 2005, and he was artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany from 2007 to 2008.