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Hoy Cheong Wong / Malaysia b.1960 / In search of faraway places (from ‘Migrants’ series) 1996 / Charcoal, photocopy transfer and collage on paper scroll / Three panels: 204.5 x 151cm (each); 204.5 x 453cm (overall) / The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 1996 with funds from Michael Sidney Myer through and with the assistance of the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Hoy Cheong Wong
Wong Hoy CheongIn search of faraway places 1996
Not Currently on Display
In search of faraway places is the fifth work of Wong Hoy Cheong’s ‘Migrant’ series. It reflects a highly personal exploration of identity and marginalisation in contemporary Malaysia.
The series is based on his own family history. As the son of a second generation, working-class Chinese immigrant who married into a wealthy Peranakan (Straits-born Chinese) family, Wong Hoy Cheong probes the complex split of cultural allegiances of Peranakan identity and the Sino-Malay-British colonial influences that have shaped it.
Using a medium that recalls the sepia-toned photographs of a family album, he creates images that resonate with references to migration and displacement, class and context, prejudice and identity over generations past. Dealing with the issue of migration, ‘the ebb and flow’ of people, is not just relevant to Malaysia and Malaysians. Hoy Cheong is interested in universal themes like the movement of people and the strength and tenacity of the human spirit that is prepared to risk all for a better life.
Wong Hoy Cheong probes the complex split of cultural allegiances of Peranakan identity and the Sino-Malay-British colonial influences that have shaped it. His work deals with issues of cultural difference, race, ethnicity, migration, discrimination and history. He says:
I grew up listening to stories. Stories told by my father and mother, grandmothers, aunties and uncles. They were stories of remembrance layered with wonder and pain, conflict and reconciliation, mystery and miracle. My drawings [the ‘Migrants’ series] take these stories, rich with images, as a starting point. I am interest[ed] in how the histories of people are made; how the individual “I” becomes the collective “I” and how the easily forgotten dreams of one person becomes the dreams of a people. I am interested in the migration of people, their paths, their continuous ebb and flow, from land to land searching for a better life and their eventual indigenisation in a new homeland.1
Endnotes:
1. Wong Hoy Cheong, The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [Artists’ statements], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996, p.5.