Weng Io Wong
About
BIO
Wengio (Yoyo) Wong was born and raised in Macao during the transitional period between the Portuguese and Chinese governments’ official handover. Working across a range of mediums such as sculpture, installation, and video, she reflects on how we deal with the inevitable changes in human behaviors and emotions in the contemporary digital era, by weaving together the fragmented memories, history, mythology and architectural elements referencing her cultural heritage. She is also interested in the shifting of meanings in different cultural settings through the progress of time.
Wong holds a Bachelor of Fine Art with First Class Honours at the RMIT, Australia (2015) and is completing an MA in Sculpture at the RCA (2024). She is the recipient of the Gilbert Bayes RCA Award (2024), a nominee for the New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize (2024), and has been awarded the 8th Orient Foundation Art Award (2019).
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Extending from my previous work ‘Glaucus’, ‘Garden of Escape, Fountain of Furor’ is a self-portrait and an anthropomorphic space that explores Macao’s baroque- a hybrid composition of postcolonial European, traditional Chinese, and casino architecture. Inspired by Tao Yuanming’s ‘Peach Blossom Spring’(桃花源記) and the story of ‘Lotus-eaters’ in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, I look into the idea of escapism, protection, and home by exploring themes of defense mechanisms in psychology and nature.
Drawing inspiration from Taoist Cloud Calligraphy, as outlined in the book ‘Tao Magic: The Chinese Art of The Occult’ by László Legeza. I merged this vocabulary into tables of the ‘English alphabet’ and ‘Defense Mechanism’. Additionally, I incorporate Fu Talismans to provide protection and healing. I made a mixture of papier-mâché with Chinese and Portuguese newspaper, ingredients of ‘Chunambo’ and concrete to explore the shifting meaning of boundaries and materials at different times. ‘Chunambo’ (夯土), composed of brown sugar, oyster shells, gravel, and other ingredients, was employed by the Portuguese Army to construct city borders in Macao.
‘Beehive Fantasy’ is a sound interactive installation that explores the themes of vulnerability, labour, and resilience. I collect images of fences and barriers between homes and cities in London, Macao and online, and turn them into anthropomorphic alien-like imageries. In Ancient Egypt, the beehive represented concepts of death and rebirth, while in Greek and Roman civilizations, it embodied the ideals of an ideal society and prosperity. These diverse historical and social interpretations of the beehive prompt a reconsideration of the foundational units of society, such as families, and their role in shaping the broader social and environmental structures. Through studying defense mechanisms, I employed fantasy as a means of protection, contemplating the formation of communities.
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Portrait credit: Xize Xu
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