Min Wong

Ahyer no face, 2011

My grandfather, on my Father’s side, lived with our family in Australia until he passed away. We never spoke the same language, I am Australian and he was Chinese. My father brought him to Australia from Hong Kong when his wife passed away. It was my father’s cultural responsibility to take care of his father.

I travelled to China with my family for the first time in 2009, meeting up with my immediate family, we visited our father’s home town in Guangzhou. I met with relatives that I had never known and during a visit to a local shrine I discovered 1,000 years of my ancestor’s history documented in scrolls and aging portraits. The following day we visited our ancestor’s grave, we prayed and performed a local ceremony, burning offerings to protect our ancestors in heaven. Tradition dictates that following the ceremony the family retires to a feast of pork and duck, three generations honouring our family and culture.

This is one of the very few Chinese traditions that my father has retained since his migration to Australia and passed onto his children.

Chapel of the Lioness 1&2, 2013

In cultures, animals have thought to be manlike, to have souls, or to be equipped with magical powers. Animals are intimate, reciprocal and crucially ambivalent creatures. Humans recognise a continuity and kinship with animals. This is expressed in various conceptions of how animals are regarded as guardian spirits and “alter egos”. This facile and frequent interchangeability between human and animal forms unifies humans, animals and nature.

These portraits are my great grandmother and her daughter, and their story. They play the roles of the ferocious lioness and the shy, isolated fox.