This piece consists of six photographs of
different sizes between 130 x 102 and 112 x 83 cm. The work has been shown
three times to the public: First at the 10th Biennale d'art
contemporaine de Lyon in 2009 and in 2010 at the Retrospective Show at the
Eslite Gallery. According to this Gallery[1] the
photographs were also shown at the Hongkong International Art Fair 2011 and is
sold as one piece.[2]
(Fig. 1) Four photographs from the series Days of Our Lives by Wong Hoy Cheong at the 10th Biennale d'art contemporaine de Lyon. Photo: Haupt & Binder, 2009 Source:http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2009/wong_hoy_cheong/images/01
(Fig.
2) Four photographs from the series Chronicles of Crime (2006) by Wong Hoy Cheong at the 10th
Biennale d'art contemporaine de Lyon. Photo: Haupt & Binder, 2009 placed in
front of the series Days of Our Lives (2009) Source:http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2009/wong_hoy_cheong/images/08
The theme of the Biennial The Spectacle of the Everyday
gives also a key to the statement by the artist. While Thierry Raspail, the
artistic director of the show, points out the difficulty in defining a 'here'
from a European philosophical point of view, he also emphasises on the need to
depart from this ubiquitous place, to leave a centre in order to approach the
diversity of multiple everyday histories.[3] Curator
Hou Hanru brings up the spectacle as a basic and inherit element to our present
life.[4] But even
contemporary art as the everyday are considered to be spaces "to
critically confront and to subversively negotiate with the condition of
"no-outside"." of the 'global empire'.[5] Hanru
places the work of Wong Hoy Cheong in the 4th category entitled 'Living
Together' of the 5 categories established in the Bienale catalogue, relating it
to the 5th, named 'Veduta' and aimed to sum the works around
European realities and themes. The project submitted by the artist to the
curator and Project Manager gives also a key to this work. Three images from
the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon were provided, but only one these was finally
shot. Two images: One of a boy with chef's hat on his head, preparing food in a
brass pot, while petting a cat and a second of woman dressed in white, sitting
on red armchair, while playing the guitar. In in the foreground to her feet a
pillows with a yellow one on to The interior has a green-blue background
(Pierre August Renoir, Femme jouant de la
guitare [Woman playing the guitar], oil
on canvas, 81 x 65 cm, 1880). The titles of the paintings are not specified
neither by the artist, nor by the authors. In the description the naïve view
remains on the everyday activities "like preparing food, reading and
playing music, poverty and eviction, relaxing on a chair or going of to
war"[6] pointing
out the universal relevance of the emotions shown in these scenes, but set in
contrast to today's European reality. Neither the painters, nor the painting, but the way of representation and the domiciled
migrants and the concept of Frenchness are relevant,. Wong had selected
around ten paintings from the Musée de Beaux-Arts Lyon, but wanted to shoot only five
or six photos. Together with the curator and Project Manager the artist
selected from these ten images six that were finally shot.[7]
As a second site specific project by Wong for the Biennale he presented Everyday Reminders to be carried out at the sugar warehouse of Les Sukriye, spotting "the historical linkage of France to Islam through its colonial sugar plantations in Africa."[8] This project proposed to hang bells into into an open four floor skeleton of a half demolished concrete structure, divided vertically into two sections sharing each a half of the same pavilion. On one hand a white bench, on the other a green mat/carpet as a transparent front. In one section a bell that rings to the schedule of the Basilique de Fourvière, in the other a bell-speaker playing the call to prayer five times a day, following the schedule of Lyon. Wong places the call to ritual of two religions side by side in a same semi-demolished construction, an industrial ruin of colonial mercantile relationships. Religions are also put in contrast through attributes in Days of Our Lives. The spectator of Wong's digital photographs printed on canvas and framed and hung as paintings belonging to past centuries might recognize immediately the similarities to the original paintings, he or her could have seen somewhere else the same motifs, but the depicted persons do not seem to belong to the scene. The paintings are “re-shot as photographs with a twist, incorporating models who represented people from the French colonial empire such as north and east Africa, and Indochina.”[9] irritating more or less the spectator, also because of the insertion of contemporary elements. The scenes are emblematic to European genre paintings from the 19th and early 20th century and were repeated and adopted in its way -or re-enacted- in the colonies as romanticism, classicism or modernism with local elements. But there is also a site specific aspect intrinsic to Wong's piece:
As a second site specific project by Wong for the Biennale he presented Everyday Reminders to be carried out at the sugar warehouse of Les Sukriye, spotting "the historical linkage of France to Islam through its colonial sugar plantations in Africa."[8] This project proposed to hang bells into into an open four floor skeleton of a half demolished concrete structure, divided vertically into two sections sharing each a half of the same pavilion. On one hand a white bench, on the other a green mat/carpet as a transparent front. In one section a bell that rings to the schedule of the Basilique de Fourvière, in the other a bell-speaker playing the call to prayer five times a day, following the schedule of Lyon. Wong places the call to ritual of two religions side by side in a same semi-demolished construction, an industrial ruin of colonial mercantile relationships. Religions are also put in contrast through attributes in Days of Our Lives. The spectator of Wong's digital photographs printed on canvas and framed and hung as paintings belonging to past centuries might recognize immediately the similarities to the original paintings, he or her could have seen somewhere else the same motifs, but the depicted persons do not seem to belong to the scene. The paintings are “re-shot as photographs with a twist, incorporating models who represented people from the French colonial empire such as north and east Africa, and Indochina.”[9] irritating more or less the spectator, also because of the insertion of contemporary elements. The scenes are emblematic to European genre paintings from the 19th and early 20th century and were repeated and adopted in its way -or re-enacted- in the colonies as romanticism, classicism or modernism with local elements. But there is also a site specific aspect intrinsic to Wong's piece:
These reenacted photographs or tableaux vivants (living pictures)
are based on French paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon (France) which
depict domestic scenes: preparing food; relaxing, reading and playing music;
giving charity to the poor or being evicted from home or going off to war. They
are paintings of ordinary people and their everyday activities and problems.[10]
The
local visitors familiar with the original are being confronted to works they
have experienced in a setting that seems to be recreated at the Biennale. The Bordeaux-red painted walls, the wooden floor,
even the frames seem to belong. The size of the photographs seem almost the
same to the original size of the paintings.
(Fig. 3) Right: Wong Hoy Cheong, The Charity Lady, 2009, Digital photograph on coated canvas 112 x 86 cm. © Photo: Wong Hoy Cheong. Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA.
Right: Jean-Baptiste Greuze ' Dame de la Charité, 1775 © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Larson Juhl.
But
in fact, while the measures of Greuze' Dame de la Charité (1775) are 146x112 cm, Wong
chose 112 x 86 cm keeping the same proportion. The frames chosen for the
exhibition at the Biennale were 'supposed to reflect classical framing'[11]. But
unfortunately a misunderstanding led to the use of narrow frames.
(Fig. 4) Frame and details of Wong Hoy Cheong, Mother & Child. Details of photo by JaHoVil, (taken on September 30, 2009) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jahovil/4229249722/
While
in all photographs the most of the elements and characters are equivalent in
function, there are some qualitative differences to the paintings. While the
lightning and the interiors in all paintings were meticulously re-staged, the
furnitures vary slightly, seem to be contextualised, the dresses of the
characters are rather contemporary, but their roles in the narrative context are
the same. None the less, the most important are the changed attributes. In Greuze' Dame de la Charité one can be found in the lightening candle in the bucket at the
bottom close to the table, but also in the currency charity is demonstrated.
(Fig. 5) Jean-Baptiste Greuze ' Dame de la Charité, 1775, oil on canvas, 146 x 112. Source: Barker, Emma, Greuze
and the Painting of Sentiment. Cambridge, 2005, Abb.
VIII. © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon.
But there are also certain changes the
spectator becomes aware of in three of these paintings that have to do with
Christianity and Islam: The Reading based on Henri Fantin-Latour's La Lecture (1877), Playing for
Dying Mother after Puvis de Chavannes’ Jean Cavalier jouant le choral de
Luther devant sa mere mourante (1851) and Soldier's Farewell
after Michel Genod’s Les Adieux du soldat (1824).
(Fig. 6) Wong Hoy Cheong. The Reading, 2009. Digital photograph on coated canvas, 112
x 83 cm. © Photo: Wong Hoy Cheong. Tepper Takayama Fine
Arts, Boston MA, USA. Right: Henri Fantin-Latour's "La
Lecture", 1877 © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de
Lyon, Larson Juhl.
(Fig. 7) Wong Hoy Cheong. Playing for Dying Mother, 2009. Digital photograph on coated canvas, 104 x 80 cm. © Photo: Wong Hoy Cheong. Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA. Right: Puvis de Chavannes, Jean Cavalier jouant le choral de Luther devant sa mere mourante, 1851. © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Larson Juhl.
(Fig. 7) Wong Hoy Cheong. Playing for Dying Mother, 2009. Digital photograph on coated canvas, 104 x 80 cm. © Photo: Wong Hoy Cheong. Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA. Right: Puvis de Chavannes, Jean Cavalier jouant le choral de Luther devant sa mere mourante, 1851. © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Larson Juhl.
These two photos (Fig.s 6 and 7) have in common references to
Muslim culture. While in The Reading (Fig. 6) this is striking by the
female clothes, in Playing for Dying Mother (Fig. 7) the attribute of
the book in the left hand of the mother (the context supposes the Bible) is
replaced by the Tasbih.[12]
But here the format has been slightly altered vertically, filling in the window
in the background and offering more space in the upper part. Out there in the
background buildings on a hill are visible. One of these can be identified as a
basilica with towers, below it we see houses with red roofs and apparently
contemporary high rise apartment blocks of a suburb at the lower side of the
hill. Religious symbols and the 'shift' in European social realities is
addressed here, suggesting the apartment blocks as housing for immigrants.
 |
The soldier's Farewell (Fig. 8) shows a young man, apparently an Ottoman infantry soldier, going of to war.[13] In this photo the costumes, implements and uniforms of the persons are changed from the original painting. But also the basic commodities are replaced in an historically equivalent way by culturally adequate objects. Addressing the participation in war by exchanging and confronting culturally connotated objects means also to address the conflict between cultures.
 |
The cruel proprietator (Fig. 9) follows the same pattern of re-staging lightning, the interior, furnitures in an adequate style, exchanging the characters in their and with their attributes. Even if this last scene in the photographic interpretation appears less dramatic and dense than the painting, it is the drama what joins four of the pieces (Fig.s 3, 7, 8, 9), a universal drama that can also be related to discourses regarding the relation between colonizers and colonized, first world and third world: charity, war, domiciled migrants of different generations, war and displacement. Two of the scenes are rather quiet: Fig. 6 (The Reading) and Fig.10 (Mother & Child).
(Fig. 10) Wong Hoy Cheong, Mother &
Child, 2009, digital photograph on coated canvas, 88 x 110 cm, © Photo:
Wong Hoy Cheong. Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA.
Right: Suzanne Valadon, Marie Coca et sa fille Gilberte 1913, © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Larson Juhl.
Right: Suzanne Valadon, Marie Coca et sa fille Gilberte 1913, © Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Larson Juhl.
 |
(Fig. 11) Wong Hoy Cheong, Days of Our Lives at his retrospective show (1998-2010) at Eslite Gallery, Taiwan. Photograph provided by Wong Hoy Cheong.
In the press articles related to the retrospective show in 2010 at the Eslite Gallery (1998-2010)
the work is just mentioned and does not seem to
be relevant in particular.[14] Darren Wee[15]
draws its attention on the concept of race, but does not explicitly mention
"Days of Our Lives". This might be due to the fact that other works
are more relevant, provocative and elaborated and have a wider range of references.
But I also dare to say that its mimetic and ironic approach is not thrilling
enough in other contexts, also in the European colonies. David Frazier observed
already a “A Farewell to Post-Colonialism” at the Guangzhou Triennial of 2008.[16]
Anyway, it is important to consider the series as a whole, any of the
photographs separated from the others will result in a loss of meaning. The
Reading could also hang in Saudi Arabia or Iran, the Lady of Charity
in Myanmar and the Evil Landlord in Nigeria, without unfolding the
significance it had in its setting at the Biennale de Lyon. Only the whole
series, properly framed and in the
context of a museum is capable of communicating its meaning. But also a certain
kind of museographical setting is necessary. Fig. 11 shows a setting that is
close to museographical setting the artist intended: dark red painted walls,
spot lights and heavy wide frames. An article by Gong Zhuo Jun (龔卓軍)
published in ARTCO in February of 2011 titles “Wong Hoy Cheong's Living Room” (黃海昌的起居室)
and stresses the work Re:Looking, the multiple media used by the artist
and introduces the term 'hybridity' to refer to Wong's oeuvre. His work as a
reflection on hybridity and hybridity as a method. This controversial term
describes forms of transcultural expressions within the contact zone[17].
Little
has been said about the exhibition at the Hongkong International Art Fair in 2011. The Eslite Gallery confirmed the sale as a
series, but the series Days of Our Lives is offered right now also as an
edition of 15 at the Tepper Takayama Fine Arts Gallery.
So far, I can confirm that the main strategy
applied here by Wong is transposing visual conventions from European high art
placing references to recent pop culture into scenes that may have a local context.
This is also true regarding the photo series Chronicles
of Crime (2006) and some of its visual references. Wong speaks also
here of the 'tableaux vivant'[18].
Different readings of the artwork Days
of Our Lives are possible: I'd like to discuss three photographs of this
series and present three possible readings and set them in contrast.
1 A colonizers Reading
A general negative reading -in terms of the
colonizing point of view- could be: The depicted characters appear to have
invaded a space they do not belong to, they have taken the place of those who
stand for certain implicit values in each scene. A striking scene is that of
the reading women by Henri Fantin-Latour. The portrait of elegantly dressed
women sitting at a table and reading is a sujet that expresses bourgeois
values: The highly cultured sensual wife, capable not only of managing the
domestic ambit – shown inside the house, where she still belongs to –
furthermore educating herself in humanities and literature. These Christian
bourgeois values are still present in our days. Societies may have changed, but
this image still makes many feel comfortable. The scene is striking in these
days because the freedom of women to educate themselves in Islamic societies is
something Europeans like to question in order to justify their military
occupation or to point at the incompatibility of values as an obstacle for
integration. The image of girls going to primary school to learn to read and
write has become a propaganda image throughout the western world and invokes
the clash of cultures by placing it between images of bearded men with rifles
and helmed and shaved men in the previous or next take of a news sequence. Thus
placing Islamic dressed women on an high culture picture carrier Wong aims to
challenge established images but achieves in addition to bring up a cluster of
images used in propaganda, news and journalism by taking a title of an old and
ongoing U.S. soap opera. A closer look at this photography and the image it is
based on.
2 Fatin-Latour's La Lecture and Wong Hoy Cheong's The Reading
It is unlikely that two women will share a
private space wearing a veil. The addressed spectator of this image is male and
a colonizer too, so they need to be veiled. The image implies the presence of a
male and a colonizers gaze too in order to provoke. The setting is nearly the
same as in the painting, there are minor changes in the way the woman holding
the book in the background wears the chador (چادر) and the
niqap (نقاب), while the one
wearing also a hijab ((حجاب in the foreground listens. But these minor
changes become relevant as we perceive the image. Comparing the compositions we
can reach to a further understanding on how this image is aimed to provoke.
While in the painting the book rests on her knee in the photograph it rests on
the table. The position of her left hand is also slightly changed. While the
reading woman in the painting places her left hand under her cheek, her palm
slightly opened to the spectator, the woman in the photograph holds her hand
closed, under her chin. And even if the head of each of the characters rests
inclined on the left hand while reading, the character in the photograph
appears less 'open', uncommunicative or even aggressive placing its head on a
hand that isolated from the scene could appear as a fist. The book placed on
the table does also deplete the image of the physical contact between flesh and
book, soft and hard. These details enhance the intended impression. The
conventional female sensuality attributed to the character in the painting has
disappeared in the corporal language and replaced by a pose that does not leave
any space for sensuality. The woman in the foreground remains passive in each image,
the style of furnitures and the pattern of the tablecloth are changed to fit a
specific cultural context. Even the –probably illusionary painted– door in the
background of the photo is slightly different.
3 A universal Reading
A conciliative –or re-affirmative or even totalizing– reading could conclude that all characters are
exchangeable in every scene. That every depicted circumstance could belong to
any society, colonized or not. By exchanging the race, the ethnic type of the
characters in each scene this reading could go further and consider that here
the artist is universalizing the values expressed in each scene: Here the young
man playing music for a dying mother, there the young man as a 'universal'
soldier leaving a family that requires his presence. But since the artist
chooses certain figures to take roles in the narration in each scene, this
message is unlikely to be intended. To question a European -and more
specifically a French, British, German and even Austrian - identity by spotting
the colonizing gaze seems to me the main intention by the artist. By calling
the depicted scenes “ordinary people” in “everyday life” Wong first neglects
the cultural charge of each picture in order to make the spectator become aware
of it. But he finishes his statement by pointing out this charge: “While these
paintings are of the past, their topicality and emotions are still as resonant
and relevant today. While the characters inhabiting these paintings are of
obvious European extraction, the reality has radically shifted.”[19] This
shift in reality has created new images of the colonized. Mostly through
journalism according to the needs of European interests. All of these images:
Of homeless Senegalese refugees surrounding Spanish metropolis, Filipino nurses
caring for elder persons in Europe, German military presence to ensure Afghan
girls attending to school, the talented but violent male youth living in the
suburbs outside French metropolis, and the male youth being recruited to fight
the “unbelievers”[20]. These
images that construct our perception of shift in reality shall presumably be
activated in the spectators mind to question his colonizing gaze.
4 A Naïve Reading
The last reading implies a totally naïve
spectator, who does not see a link to the paintings and considers the
characters to be originally part of the scene as he or her in a future will
find these photo prints separately in a collection, an exhibition or even
better in an archive as or even more important than the Fine Arts Gallery of
Lyon. This reading is also implicit since the artist points out the universal
meaning in the depiction of emotions and the little attention to the concrete
persons depicted.
The photograph that
seem to drop out for two reasons is the Mother & Child portrait (Fig.
10). It is the most modern and most pictorial painting. Pictorial in the sense
of usage of colour and painting tecnique. The colours of Mother & Child
are not yet Fauve but already non academic and post-impressionists-like.
European Modernism also inaugurated a shift in perception of the colonies. This
interpretation, to presume that this later turn in colonial history also was
considered in choosing this 20th century painting, might go to far,
but I'm still convinced that certain ethnies or races were carefully chosen to
be inserted in specific pictorial environments. The two depicted characters can
not be located easily as non European by their physiognomy (same as the others,
but for the colonizers gaze the degree of 'otherness' to its own aspect is striking)
The conclusion and
intended message of the series is expressed in the last two sentences of the
artist's statement:
The Judeo-Christian
Europeanness of another epoch gives way to a new fluidity and diversity. The
past lives in the present, and the present in past as domiciled and naturalized
migrant minorities reconstructs a new Europeanness for this century.[21]
This is
achieved by transposing and creating scenes of an time-transcending fiction.
[1] Wong is not
mentioned among the artists on an older page of the Gallery at Art Link Art: http://www.artlinkart.com/en/space/overview/ccffuw. Accessed March
28, 2012.
Wong has formerly been represented by the Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, but is now represented by Eslite Gallery in Taiwan. Days of Our Lives is also sold at the Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA.
Wong has formerly been represented by the Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, but is now represented by Eslite Gallery in Taiwan. Days of Our Lives is also sold at the Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston MA, USA.
[2] 金振寧Jennings
King, Eslite Gallery, e-mail message to author, March 29, 2012. None the less,
the prints can also be purchased individually from an edition of 15 for USD
6,500.- each and the whole art piece for USD 35,100.-. unframed.
[3] Conf.: Raspail, Thierry;
Huo Hanru. Spectacle of the Everyday, Lyon : Les presses
du réel. Catalogue of the 10th Biennale d'art contemporaine de Lyon
2009. 12-16.
[4] Conf. Idem. 25-32.
[5] Hou refers to A. Negri's
and M. Hardt's Empire,1 giving the domain of the everyday a key role and the
place where these negotiations need to be distinguished.
[6] Raspail,
T.; Huo H. Spectacle of the Everyday, 357.
[9] Facekraft
Blog (Baharuden, Shanaz) “"Days Of Our Lives" - A Series of
Photographs Re-Enacting French Paintings for Lyon Biennale by Wong Hoy Cheong”, September, 2009. Accessed on March 13, 2012. http://facekraft.typepad.com/thefacestyler/2009/09/my-entry.html.
[10] Wong Hoy Cheong, “Wong Hoy
Cheong : Days Of Our Lives - Statement by the artist,” September, 2009.
[12] Similar
to a rosary.
[13] HangPC2, June 23, 2009, comment on “Ottoman Modern Army 19th Century” Military Photos
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?159494-Ottoman-Units-amp-Uniforms-amp-Weapons-(1299-1923)&s=c0a11728c6fc6df7344c3784fbcf7255&p=4219161&viewfull=1#post4219161 accessed February 22, 2012.
[15] Darren
Wee, “Malaysian artist holds ‘racey’ new exhibition Wong’s first solo
exhibition in Taiwan unravels the construct of race and
racial purity” The China Post, December 31, 2010.
[16] Frazier, David, ““Days of Our
Lives” Wong Hoy Cheong” http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/73/WongHoyCheongDaysOfOurLivesWongHoyCheong
accessed 4-10-2012
[17] Term
introduced into linguistics and cultural theory by Mikhail Bakhtin, later
related to Homi Bhabha's concept of 'Third Space of enunciation', a space were
interdependency between colonizer and colonized takes a form and
con-tradictions and ambivalences emerge. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies The Key
Concepts, 2003.
[18] Carmen Nge, “Darkness Rising”
in Shifts – Wong Hoy Cheong, 2002-2007, edited by June Yap,
16-24. Singapore: NUS Museum/Galeri Petronas, 2007. 50.
[19] Wong Hoy Cheong, “Days Of
Our Lives - Statement by the artist”, 2009
[20] Or more precisely: To fight
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This to make the link back to the
Austro-Hungarian-Ottoman conflict Wong treats in his work Re:Looking
(2002), http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2004/wong_hoy_cheong
accessed March 20, 2012.
[21] Wong Hoy Cheong, “Wong Hoy
Cheong : Days Of Our Lives - Statement by the artist,” September, 2009.
