Born in 1971 in Singapore, Ming Wong lives and works in Singapore and Berlin. Wong, whose practice explores the performative veneers of language and identity through the moving image, often plays a mélange of roles for the camera, donning the plural personas of actors, actresses and their screen parts, at other times assuming the director’s chair. Wong who has had solo exhibitions in Berlin, Singapore and Sydney, has exhibited at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2009) and participated in group exhibitions at several international biennales.‘Four Malay Stories’ represents a cinema billboard designed by Wong and hand-painted by Neo Chon Teck, Singapore’s last surviving billboard painter. Inspired by the work of Malay showbiz icon P. Ramlee, Wong attempts to learn his Malay lines to portray a spectrum of 16 stock characters from four P. Ramlee’s films. ‘Four Malay Stories’ is a revisitation of the golden age of cinema in the 1950s and 1960s through the performative veneers of language and identity.
