Wong Hoy-Cheong

wong hoy cheong has taken a more objective approach to his role as an artist in malaysia, making a broad sweep of the events and forces that have shaped the country. working in a wide range of media, he has always sought to disturb our sense of security, reminding us of our past, re-inventing our history. his art has been called “mischievous” – it is at once seductive and ironic…

Wong Hoy Cheong was born in Georgetown, Penang. He studied literature, education and fine arts at Brandeis University, Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts(Amherst) in the USA. His work in the 1990’s has been inter-disciplinary, involving areas such as drawing, installation, theatre/performance and video/photography…

This work deals with issues of cultural difference, race, ethnicity, migration, discrimination and history. In search of faraway places is a highly personal exploration of identity and marginalisation in contemporary Malaysia. The series is based on the artist’s own family history. The son of a second-generation Chinese immigrant of working class origins who married into a wealthy Chinese family, Wong Hoy Cheong probes the complexity of cultural allegiances…

…Wong Hoy Cheong’s hand crafted objects use imagination and humour to look at serious social and political issues in Kuala Lumpur – a ‘global’ city, forging its post-colonial identity at the moment.

Chronicles of Crime is Wong Hoy Cheong’s photographic recreation of famous Malaysian crime scenes. He carefully composes "tableaux vivants" often using ordinary people as actors, and then photographs the scene. The end result is a series of black and white digital prints on Kodak professional paper…