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Letters from Lalalam
September 13, 2023 @ 10:00 am - 6:00 pm SMT
“You can’t pick a lotus flower when you see them in the wild. Lotuses grow near quicksand–
if you pick it you could get stuck and drown if no one rescues you.”
– Jenny Tong, Lotus Flowers (2022)
Wei-Ling Gallery presents ‘Letters from Lalalam’, marking the first Malaysian solo exhibition
by multi-disciplinary Dutch-Chinese-Malaysian artist, Yin Yin Wong. With ‘Letters from
Lalalam’, Wong invites us to have a closer look at the lives and everyday realities supporting
the Asian service industry.
In 1977, Wong’s parents emigrated from Malaysia to The Netherlands in search of a better
life. Here they opened their own restaurant named ‘Choong Kee [松 记]’, named after
Wong’s father, and served local diners for over ten years. Wong’s mother works in the
service industry to this day, while Wong’s father became estranged after the closing of the
restaurant.
Growing up in the family establishment, Wong witnessed up close the long hours and
repetitive labour performed by their parents and the toll it took on their bodies, a fate that
remains largely unseen and under-recognised in the social fabric of Dutch society. Through
their practice they look to explore themes of marginalisation experienced in the South-East
Asian diaspora, which manifests in public space predominantly through services catering to
the body in the West (in the form of restaurants, massage parlours, sex work, nail salons
etc.) They question the meaning of commodifying one’s own culture for the purpose of
consumption by others.
The title of the exhibition, ‘Letters from Lalalam’, refers to the colloquial pronunciation of
‘Rotterdam’ by the Chinese diaspora in the Netherlands. Rotterdam, the city where Wong is
based in, is home to the biggest population of East and South-East Asian immigrants in the
Netherlands. In their new sculpture series, Wong touches on the plight of these immigrants
through the visual vernacular of shop fronts and their eclectic use of language. Together with
other recent works, the artist invites us to engage with the intimate lives that support the
economic and cultural landscape of the Netherlands while continually navigating the margins
of their own diverging set of cultural and social identities.
Yin Yin Wong, who uses ‘they/them’ pronouns, identifies as non-binary, which is a term used
to describe gender identities that are not solely male nor female.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL
and Bekker-la Bastide-Fonds.
