{"id":1866303,"date":"2026-04-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1866303"},"modified":"2026-04-04T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:00:00","slug":"why-filmmaker-ming-wong-is-the-ultimate-shape-shifter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1866303","title":{"rendered":"Why Filmmaker Ming Wong Is the Ultimate Shape-Shifter"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tIn the hushed, reverent galleries of the National Gallery in London, saints usually suffer in silence. Not so in the hands of Ming Wong, who was given unparalleled access to the museum\u2019s collection of European masterpieces during a residency last year. In his latest film Dance of the Sun on the Water | Saltatio Solis in Aqua<\/em>, the Berlin-based, Singaporean artist reimagines Saint Sebastian, the third-century Roman centurion and Christian martyr who was shot through with arrows, as a slippery, time-traveling figure\u2014queer, cinematic icon and shape-shifter\u2014splintered across languages, bodies, and histories.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSaint Sebastian is a time and space traveler, a marvelous vision of a human whose gender and age also seem to shift,\u201d Wong told ARTnews<\/em> during a recent interview. \u201cWe will all be Sebastians. We will all be, in turn, destroyers and martyrs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Dance of the Sun on the Water<\/em>, Asian performers of multiple genders speak Latin and move through the charged afterimage of Derek Jarman\u2019s 1976 film Sebastiane<\/em>, refracted through the National Gallery\u2019s own painted Sebastians, of which there are 14. Often dressed in nothing more than a loincloth, the cast members are seen performing stylized re-enactments of Saint Sebastian\u2019s martyrdom within the National Gallery\u2019s ornate marble galleries. Against the backdrop of Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces, they dance, embrace, fight, and strike poses that mirror the bound, arrow-pierced figures found in the museum\u2019s historical collection.<\/p>\n

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Ming Wong performs for his film Dance of the Sun on the Water | Saltatio Solis in Aqua<\/em> (2026). <\/span>Courtesy The National Gallery, London<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAs with his shape-shifting Saint Sebastian, Wong has made a career out of destabilizing what seems fixed. Born in 1971, he characterized his native Singapore as a nation \u201cslowly throwing off its colonial layers,\u201d witnessing rapid urbanization, language policy changes, and the construction of a cultural infrastructure almost in real time. Coming from a family involved in medicine, he instead chose art at 15. \u201cI defied expectations to follow,\u201d he said. \u201cI had always been good at art, and decided to pursue it seriously, as I was aware of the country\u2019s plans to develop the art scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough an unfashionable choice in the 1990s, Wong studied traditional Chinese ink painting, calligraphy, and literature at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. \u201cThe reality of the foundational training turned out to be a lot of mind-numbing copying of the Masters,\u201d he recalled. Yet that discipline \u201coffered a window to a long-overlooked aspect of my cultural heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe sought release by writing English-language plays, which served as the basis of what would be his art practice. In that outlet, he found \u201cgratification [in] playing with language in a postcolonial society,\u201d he said. Cinema, too, would prove instructional. He consumed Hong Kong melodramas, Hollywood noirs, Bollywood musicals, and Singaporean variety shows. \u201cAs a young queer kid, it was a lot about identifying with characters of different cultural backgrounds, genders, body types, or nationalities,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course, this was all about desire and forming one\u2019s identities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ming Wong, Life of Imitation<\/em> (still), 2009.<\/span>\u00a9Ming Wong\/Courtesy Ota Fine Arts Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAfter moving to London to pursue a master\u2019s degree at UCL\u2019s Slade School of Fine Art, Wong began inserting himself into canonical Western films\u2014by Douglas Sirk, Roman Polanski, or Pier Paolo Pasolini\u2014playing every role himself, despite lacking formal acting training. In Life of Imitation<\/em>, which debuted in the Singaporean Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale and received a Special Mention from the Golden Lion jury, male actors from Singapore\u2019s major ethnic groups cycled through Wong\u2019s reworking of Sirk\u2019s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life<\/em>, subverting race, gender, and identity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI study, copy, and reinterpret cinematic works of art by directors whose vision and accomplishments mean something to me,\u201d he said. \u201cI seek out ways of telling stories and test ways of reading, listening, looking, experiencing stories\u2014ways that humans make meaning for themselves when they look at paintings or experience works of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMiscasting is Wong\u2019s signature device. In Angst Essen \/ Eat Fear<\/em> (2008), he plays an elderly housekeeper who falls for a Moroccan migrant worker from Rainer Werner Fassbinder\u2019s 1974 romance Angst essen Seele auf<\/em>, while in Next Year \/ L\u2019Ann\u00e9e Prochaine<\/em> (2016), he takes on the male and female roles from Alain Resnais\u2019s 1961 thriller Last Year in Marienbad<\/em>. Like a chameleon, he easily can play the seducer and the seduced, depending on the project.<\/p>\n

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Ming Wong, Next Year \/ L\u2019Ann\u00e9e Prochaine \/ \u660e\u5e74<\/em> (still), 2016.<\/span>\u00a9Ming Wong\/Courtesy Ota Fine Arts Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cMuch of my work involves inserting myself into situations and contexts where I supposedly do not belong,\u201d he explained, noting that for a future project he\u2019s currently researching Cantonese opera\u2019s trans-Pacific migrations from Hong Kong to North America, and its collision with Hollywood and early country music. \u201cAt the moment, I\u2019m invested in what happens in the space between China and America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWong doesn\u2019t concern himself with creating something new or original, rather he aims to transfigure what we already know. \u201cOver the years, I\u2019ve come to understand how the notion of originality or authenticity has been reduced to just one node in an interlocking chain of cause and effect,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a digital age, the hierarchies of master and copy or original and reproduction feel increasingly irrelevant. What I aim for now is a kind of variable collage of media\u2014unstable, shifting, and always in flux.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe described his process as relatively simple: \u201cYou observe, you think, you experiment, you question, you repeat.\u201d But the results are formally complex: multi-channel videos, theatrical sets, karaoke lounges, mirrored stages. Drawing from Chinese opera, sci-fi cinema, propaganda film, and Cantopop, his installations often resemble prosceniums: frames within frames, collapsing inside and outside.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of \u201cMing Wong: Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua,\u201d 2026, at National Gallery, London.<\/span>Courtesy The National Gallery, London<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThat reflexive layering comes to a head in his National Gallery installation. \u201cMy role is to keep questioning what we are looking at, and ways of looking,\u201d Wong said. \u201cLayers of meaning slip and slide across time and space. What you thought you knew so well can be fragile and destabilized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Dance of the Sun on the Water<\/em>, Latin becomes both sacred tongue and profane script, Asian bodies inhabit European martyrdom, and Jarman\u2019s homoerotic desert becomes an absurdist echo in a London museum. The 23-minute film culminates in a striking ritualistic sequence where each actor takes turns assuming the role of the martyr, being symbolically shot with arrows by fellow performers who also cycle through the roles of the archers.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of \u201cMing Wong: Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua,\u201d 2026, at National Gallery, London.<\/span>Courtesy The National Gallery, London<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tIn merging East and West, Wong sees Singapore and its history as playing an essential role to what he\u2019s trying to achieve. \u201cIt could be an advantage to not be in the dominant sphere or mainstream, but to have a perspective from the margin or as an outsider,\u201d he said, noting that as \u201ca crossroads of major distinct cultural and migratory routes\u201d where the \u201cart of code-switching\u201d is a part of daily life, Singapore can be an instructive model.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn many ways, that is similar to what Wong sees as his role as an artist. \u201cMore than ever before, society needs artists and artistic thinking,\u201d he said, \u201cto question the world at large, provoke thought, reflection, and discussion, and discover means of communication beyond words. Artists can defy logic and reasoning, and dare to go into the unknown and the unexplored.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/P8045-004-A5-pr.jpg?w=1024″] In the hushed, reverent galleries of the National Gallery in London, saints usually suffer in silence. Not so in the hands of Ming Wong, who was given unparalleled access to the museum\u2019s collection of European masterpieces during a residency last year. In his latest film Dance of the Sun on the Water […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1866303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1866303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1866303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1866303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1866303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}