Why Filmmaker Ming Wong Is the Ultimate Shape-Shifter
ARTnews.com profiles Berlin-based Singaporean artist and filmmaker Ming Wong (born 1971) and his film Dance of the Sun on the Water | Saltatio Solis in Aqua, made after a residency that granted him unusual access to the National Gallery in London’s European masterworks. The film reimagines Saint Sebastian as a queer, time-traveling shape-shifter, with Asian performers of multiple genders speaking Latin and staging stylized martyrdom scenes inside the museum’s marble galleries. Wong’s approach draws on the National Gallery’s 14 paintings of Saint Sebastian and references Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebastiane, while reflecting his own postcolonial, multilingual formation in Singapore and training at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
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This story was covered in Miniatures, Restitution, and Faith’s Surreal Power