‘Imagine, talking and talking. I’ve been talking about myself all day and you’ve listened. How boring for you. What could possibly interest you about my life? I should be like you. 

You know what I thought after seeing your movie that night? When I came home and looked in the mirror, I thought, “But we look alike.” Don’t get me wrong. You’re more beautiful. But somehow… in some way we’re alike. I think I could change myself into you. If I really tried. I mean, inside. Don’t you think so? Of course you wouldn’t have any difficulty turning into me. You could be me, just like that. But your soul would stick out everywhere, it’s too big to be inside me. It would look all sort of odd.’

For his first exhibition in carlier | gebauer gallery, Ming Wong presents an installation developed from his multifaceted project Persona Performa, originally commissioned last year for Performa 11, the visual art performance biennial in New York. Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 cinematic masterpiece Persona, the event featured a ‘live’  movie strip – comprising 24 actors as 24 film frames – that wound its way through the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. 

In his installations, video pieces and performances, Ming Wong examines the nature of identity from cross-cultural perspectives. He has drawn inspiration from filmmakers such as Fassbinder, Pasolini, Visconti, Sirk, Wong Kar-Wai, Polanski as well as exploring classic cinema from his country of origin, Singapore. Almost all of his pieces deal with language barriers in juxtaposition to the ostensible universality of film-image.