Presented by Wei-Ling Gallery

Wei-Ling Gallery presents multi-disciplinary Dutch-Chinese-Malaysian artist, Yin Yin Wong. 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-recognized 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 parlors, sex work, nail salons etc.). They question the meaning of commodifying one’s own culture for the purpose of consumption by an other’s.

In this short film, Wong asks their mother to teach them how to fold the lotus flower napkins that they used to have on our restaurant table setting. During the folding tutorial, they talk about different connotations surrounding the lotus flower and memories of their restaurant ‘Choong Kee [松记].’

In the film Wong asks their mother whether she had ever seen a lotus flower in real life. She answers that she has seen them in Malaysia, in the wild. She followed that wild lotus flowers should never be picked, as those who try get caught in the surrounding quicksand and drown.

In this they heard a metaphor for the diasporic experience–many Asian families venture to the West in search of a better life, only to get stuck with no way back.