Ming Wong
‹손에 손잡고›, 2019
Sunu Jappo/手拉手/Hand in Hand, 2019
단채널 비디오, 인쇄된 직물로 제작한 의상,
시진핑 주석의 중국어 연설 음성 전사
14분 36초
Single-channel video, costume made of painted fabric,
transcriptions of speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping
14 min 36 sec
그는 국가 발전의 중심에 문화가 있다고 믿었으나 박물관은 50년이 지난 후에야 중국의 지원을 받아 건립되었다. 영상은 대본이나 명확한 내러티브 없이 작가가 두 큐레이터와 함께 수집한 사운드와 이미지 파편으로 구성되어 있다. 밍웡은 자신의 작품을 “식민주의적 시선에 대해 ‘관하여 말하지 않고 가까이에서 말한다’는 트린 T. 민하의 태도에 바치는 헌사”로 묘사한다. 트린 T. 민하는 첫 영화 ‹재집합›(1982)을 세네갈에서 제작했다. 밍웡의 영상은 문화적 외교의 근간이 되는 시선과 행위의 협상을 묘사하고 있지만 문화 대사를 자청한 그의 역할은 오늘날 재동원되고 있는 역사의 궤적을 향해 손짓하는 암호이기도 하다. 흑인 문명박물관 외에도 세네갈은 중국 정부의 일대일로(一帶一路) 정책에 참여한 첫 번째 서아프리카 국가이며 2018년 시진핑 주석의 아프리카 순방의 첫 방문지였다.
Sunu Jappo /手拉手/Hand in Hand is a video poem that sees the artist take on the persona of a cultural ambassador revisiting the sites of Sino-Senegalese ‘friendship’ built with Chinese aid. Inspired by the 2018 opening of the Museum of Black Civilizations, artist Ming Wong organized a research trip to Senegal with Chinese curators Xia Yanguo from Beijing and Enoch Cheng from Hong Kong under the auspices of the Goethe Institute’s project Migration Narratives in East and Southeast Asia in 2018/2019. The museum, a symbol of decolonization and of Black identity, was first proposed by the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, who served as the first president of Senegal (1960 – 1980), as part of his vision for a postcolonial pan-Africanism. While Senghor believed that culture was at the heart of development, his museum was only accomplished 50 years later with the help of Chinese aid.
Unscripted and made without any explicit narrative, Wong’s video is constructed from fragments of sounds and images that he collected with the two curators. He describes the video as “a tribute to Trinh T. Minh-ha’s positioning against the colonizing gaze: ‘I do not intend to speak about; just speak nearby.’” Trinh made her first film, Reassemblage (1982), in Senegal. While Wong’s video illustrates the negotiation of gazes and performances that underlies cultural diplomacy, his cultural ambassador is also a cipher gesturing toward the historical trajectories that are being remobilized today. Apart from being home to the Museum of Black Civilizations, Senegal was the first West African country to join the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative and was the first stop on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tour of Africa in 2018.
Born in Singapore and currently based in Berlin and Stockholm, Ming Wong is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, video, and installation to unravel ideas of ‘authenticity’ and the ‘other’ with reference to the act of human performativity. Through a re-telling of world cinema and popular culture and re-readings of cultural artefacts from around the world, Wong’s artistic research and practice explore the politics of representation and how culture, gender, and identity are constructed, reproduced, and circulated. His work has been shown in the Asian Art Biennale at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, 2019; Times Art Center Berlin, 2019; Cosmopolis #1.5, Chengdu, 2018; Busan Biennale, 2018; Dakar Biennale, 2018; Dhaka Art Summit, 2018; Para Site, Hong Kong 2018; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2018; Centre National de la Danse, Paris, 2018; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 2017; The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2017; Sydney Biennale, 2016 & 2010; Asia Pacific Triennial, 2015; Shanghai Biennale, 2014; Lyon Biennale, 2013; Singapore Biennale, 2011; Gwangju Biennale, 2010; Performa, New York, 2010. He has had solo exhibitions at ASAKUSA (2019) and Shiseido Gallery (2013) in Tokyo; Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest (2016); UCCA, Beijing (2015); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2012).He represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with the solo presentation Life of Imitation, which was awarded a special mention.
Ming Wong, Sunu Jappo/手拉手/Hand in Hand, 2019, still. Courtesy of the artist.