The world of cinema is Ming Wong’s gateway to imagination. In many of his works, he subverts the role of the actor in order to reveal how gender, race, nationality, language, body type and other categories are always a form of performance. Sometimes Wong plays all the roles himself—even learning different languages to do so. Wong has maintained a particular interest in Cantonese opera, having grown up with it in Singapore. Since 2012, he has investigated the modernisation of Cantonese opera in the 20th century, its cinematic transformations and unlikely relationship with the development of science fiction in the Chinese speaking world. Alongside Wayang Spaceship, other works that address this theme include Windows on The World (Parts 1 & 2) (2014), Blast off into the Sinosphere (2014), and Scenography for a Chinese Science Fiction Opera (2015).

The latter was a work that invited the public to walk through a full scale hand painted stage set of a hypothetical science-fiction themed Chinese opera inspired by cosmological motifs from Buddhist cave paintings and Eastern Bloc science fiction movies. Wong represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with his solo exhibition, Life of Imitation, which won a special mention. The Wayang Spaceship at the Singapore Art Museum will evolve over a two year period, and will feature a range of performances and access programmes. www.mingwong.org