Production Still from a Chinese Science Fiction Opera V, Ming Wong

These three photographs are from the installation Scenography for a Chinese Science Fiction Opera by Singaporean artist Ming Wong. Wong’s elaborate hand-painted backdrops blend traditional Chinese garden aesthetics with a brilliant color palette and cosmological motifs derived from Buddhist cave paintings at sites such as Dunhuang in Gansu province. Clad in a shimmering metallic space suit with a bulbous helmet, the artist appears as if he emerged from a Soviet-era science fiction film. In Wong’s restaging of Cantonese opera as a “space opera,” the convergence of diverse source material evokes a multifaceted environment that spans many times and places.