Ming Wong at Singapore Art Museum
Ming Wong is a Singapore-born artist who received a Special Jury Mention at last year’s Venice Biennale. He works out of Singapore and Berlin, and his entire acclaimed exhibition, Life of Imitation, is now on view at the Singapore Art Museum through August 22nd. His work confronts issues of identity in contemporary Singapore and highlights the problems of role-swapping and imitation.
The exhibit includes a video installation in which Wong films himself as 16 different characters played by legendary Malaysian actor P. Ramlee, and we see Wong doing his best to master Malay. In another installation, a Caucasian actress portrays both the Maggie Cheung and Tong Leung Chiu-Wai roles in a scene from Wong Kar-Wai’s iconic In the Mood for Love, and we see her attempt to improve her Cantonese pronunciation through various takes. In the third Wong-directed segment, three male actors representing the three main ethnic groups in Singapore (Chinese, Malay and Indian) take turns playing roles in the pivotal scene of Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life. We see the mixed race daughter confront by her black mother as the three actors, none of them black, white, or female, swap costumes and perform the famous dialogue (”I’m white! White!”).
In addition to these installations are large, vibrant paintings designed by Wong and painted by Singapore’s last surviving billboard painter. They advertise Wong’s films In Love for the Mood, Life of Imitation and his medley of Ramlee classics. Wong’s nostalgia and curiosity make this exhibition provocative, personal and quite powerful.
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