Artist Adrian Wong
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Artist Biography
Originally trained in research psychology (MA, Stanford University ‘03), Adrian Wong began making and exhibiting his works in San Francisco while concurrently conducting research in developmental linguistics. He continued his post-graduate studies in sculpture (MFA, Yale University ‘05).
Wong has operated studios in Hong Kong, Berlin, Los Angeles and most recently Chicago, where he serves as an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works have been exhibited at The Drawing Center (New York), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei), Kunsthalle Wien, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstverein in Hamburg, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), Palazzo Reale Milano, Saatchi Gallery (London) and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) — and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the 21C Collection (Chicago), DSL Foundation (Paris), K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), Kadist Foundation (San Francisco), M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Sifang Art Museum (Nanjing) and the Uli Sigg Collection (Lucerne).
Artist Statement
"With Love from Hong Kong" extends my ongoing investigation into pulp television and cinema, highlighting the intersections between these media tropes and my own family tree. This entry in the project focuses on soap operas.
"Soap operas", ubiquitous throughout the 1980's and 1990's, derive their name from their original sponsors: soap manufacturers, seeking to advertise their products to housewives. Aimed at a predominantly female viewership, they are characterised by their open-ended narrative, seriality, melodrama, sentimentality, and an interlacing of sensationalism (intrigue, scandal, supernatural elements) and prosaicism (uneventful and drawn-out storylines depicting daily life).
In 1986, during the golden age of the televised melodrama, my grandmother immigrated from Hong Kong to suburban Chicago. Despite her lack of familiarity with the cultural context of the United States and a near-complete lack of English comprehension, she spent the last decades of her life immersing in the fantasy worlds of American soaps, sometimes blurring their storylines and those of her own daily activities. My work mines the genre to create a series of vignettes of my grandmother’s life, using her lived experience as a point of departure, and the exhibition space as a site for the dramatisation of stories produced with a team of scriptwriters, production crew and actors experienced in Hong Kong television drama — mirroring and adopting her frame of reference in reverse.
Originally trained in research psychology (MA, Stanford University ‘03), Adrian Wong began making and exhibiting his works in San Francisco while concurrently conducting research in developmental linguistics. He continued his post-graduate studies in sculpture (MFA, Yale University ‘05).
Wong has operated studios in Hong Kong, Berlin, Los Angeles and most recently Chicago, where he serves as an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works have been exhibited at The Drawing Center (New York), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei), Kunsthalle Wien, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstverein in Hamburg, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), Palazzo Reale Milano, Saatchi Gallery (London) and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) — and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the 21C Collection (Chicago), DSL Foundation (Paris), K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), Kadist Foundation (San Francisco), M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Sifang Art Museum (Nanjing) and the Uli Sigg Collection (Lucerne).
Artist Statement
"With Love from Hong Kong" extends my ongoing investigation into pulp television and cinema, highlighting the intersections between these media tropes and my own family tree. This entry in the project focuses on soap operas.
"Soap operas", ubiquitous throughout the 1980's and 1990's, derive their name from their original sponsors: soap manufacturers, seeking to advertise their products to housewives. Aimed at a predominantly female viewership, they are characterised by their open-ended narrative, seriality, melodrama, sentimentality, and an interlacing of sensationalism (intrigue, scandal, supernatural elements) and prosaicism (uneventful and drawn-out storylines depicting daily life).
In 1986, during the golden age of the televised melodrama, my grandmother immigrated from Hong Kong to suburban Chicago. Despite her lack of familiarity with the cultural context of the United States and a near-complete lack of English comprehension, she spent the last decades of her life immersing in the fantasy worlds of American soaps, sometimes blurring their storylines and those of her own daily activities. My work mines the genre to create a series of vignettes of my grandmother’s life, using her lived experience as a point of departure, and the exhibition space as a site for the dramatisation of stories produced with a team of scriptwriters, production crew and actors experienced in Hong Kong television drama — mirroring and adopting her frame of reference in reverse.
Adrian Wong