A digital archive of Asian/Asian American contemporary art history

Ng, Chee Wang

Other Names: 呉子雲

Artist Website
Male

"Chee Wang Ng is an award winning designer and artist. His large digital photographs, drawn from the wood block prints of traditional Chinese folk conventions, reassert their forms and purposes. Technology, does more than update a traditional recognizable message. Ng uses the exactly repeatable visual image, as Western artifact, to eclipse the notion of rationality. He does this by pointing, unabashedly, to an Asian civilization's perennial observations. Shorn of folk art's naivete, Ng uses 'rebus,' a way of expressing words with objects whose names resemble those words, to invoke an entire Asian outlook - Nature, mysticism (as an un-mediated grasp of the universe), the I Ching classic, folk religion, family events and family ties. Proverbial motifs are made spiffy, with a social savvy that aims to achieve rapport across racial lines. In his hands ethnicity and difference become an asset. Feature articles on his graphic designs have appeared in books and magazines such as Progressive Architecture. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design in Architecture, he is trilingual, born and raised in the multiracial milieu of Malaysia."

Robert Lee, Asian American Arts Centre, 1999

Gallery of Selected Works

Selected Documents

Other Links


View artist folder list at Asian American Arts Centre