Singaporean artist Ming Wong works through the visual styles and tropes of iconic films and performances. Through reinterpretation of world cinema classics — where the artist deliberately miscasts himself and others, often playing multiple roles in a foreign language — Wong explores gender, representation, culture and identity, considering the means through which motion pictures construct subjectivity and geographic location.

Commissioned for the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, In Love for the Mood is a restaging of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai’s iconic film In the Mood for Love (2000). Wong substitutes a Caucasian actress for the roles of both Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, a man and woman whose respective spouses are cheating on them. The actress in Wong’s production is not a native speaker of Cantonese, and recites the lines with difficulty — bordering on exasperation at times — even though the artist prompts her off-screen. In a performance about identity, Wong’s deliberate miscasting of the female lead elevates the film’s exploration of the frailty of the human heart to a universal condition encountered by all, regardless of race or language.

In Love for the Mood is Samstag Museum of Art exhibition at SASA Gallery, presented courtesy of the Singapore Art Museum.

2019 Adelaide//International catalogue essay by Samstag Museum of Art Director Erica Green.