Two Wongs Making a White (2018)
Waipo, curated by Joyce Agee and Nicholas Chin, Chinese Museum, Melbourne
As part of the launch of Multicultural Museums Victoria

I am fascinated by my family's long history between China and Australia since, many stories of our family's past still haunt me. On my Father's side, my earliest ancestor to arrive in Australia was my great grandfather Wong Sing Foo who arrived illegally from Canton as a labourer around 1884, establishing himself in Cobar, New South Wales. My Grandfather George Wong and his brothers and sisters were born and bought up in Cobar, New South Wales and then lived in Sydney. I still have strong memories of them, they were an earlier generation actively involved with the Chinese Youth League and the social life of the relatively small Chinese community. 

As a child, I was always curious about this generation as they all spoke English with a thick country Australian accents and were connected to farming, market gardens, green grocers and the fresh fruit and vegetable markets. There is a lot of information about Great Uncle Fred Wong, because of his community leadership, activism and unfortunately tragic death. I realised there is little information about the experiences of women in our family and therefore, wanted to start from this female space in representing these stories.

I grew up with my Grandfather George and step Grandmother Ada Wong (nee Sing). I never met my actual Grandmother Ao Hong Hou, it often made me question who my Father's actual mother was? Although I heard about her in passing, there were many unanswered questions. I started to unravel this question further, I realised that my absent, almost forgotten Grandmother was unable to migrate to Australia in the early twentieth century due to the conditions of the ‘Immigration Restriction Act’ (1901) and the social circumstances which often excluded Chinese people, in particular Chinese women, as the growth of the Chinese community was not encouraged.

It was a time when ‘white’ migration was the preference, Chinese families often faced complex bureaucracy in attempting to stay together. As a result Chinese wives and children often stayed in China and Chinese people were seen with suspicion, a result of anti-communist sentiment of the era. My Father doesn't recall seeing his Father much when he was growing up. He only got to know him when he migrated as a young adult to Australia in 1958.

As a result my Grandmother never relocated to Australia and I never had the chance to get to know her. Over many years I have gathered various bits of information about her, to slowly create an account of the life that she must have had. My family were landowners in southern China, as a result of being market gardeners in Australia. Their property was in Qian San, China (near the Macau border, where my family re-established themselves upon return) was stripped from the family during the Cultural Revolution era (1950-70s). My grandmother stayed in the family house, during the cultural revolution, the Government required other people from the community to live in the house with her, whilst the rest of the family had escaped to Australia or Macau. 

Before I was born, I heard stories from my parents about her only visit to Australia in the 1970s. Apparently it was a heart breaking experience for her, to see that her husband, new wife and family had moved on in Australia. This sad story resonated with me and has informed this work, it was through her absence that I imagined a relationship with her. The work depicts having a dialogue together and caring for her story through offering a meal to her. Specifically I created a white dinner setting (symbolising White Australia) for the both of us, to represent the context of our family situation and her absence in it. In Chinese culture, ancestral worship is an important aspect of society, often an extra place is set for ancestors, as an offering and to cure the ‘hungry ghost’. Her story resonates with me, as a part of her is in my DNA, yet there was no opportunity to ever get to know her.

The artwork installation evolved from a short story I wrote many years ago, about learning to make dumplings from my Chinese teacher, who wasn’t my grandmother. Writing the story made me consider intergenerational disruptions of cultural knowledge sharing through migration. As the work has developed, the working title was initially the ‘Absent Wife’ project, evolving to ‘Two Wongs Making a White’ in reference to the quote ‘Two Wong’s don’t make a white’ spoken by Arthur Caldwell, Minister for Immigration(1945-49). The quote was well publicised at the time and referred to a court case involving two Wong’s seeking asylum in Australia. The quote was taken out of context and became representative of Australia's views on racism during ‘White Australia’.

The work was featured in Waipo (Grandmother's) (2018) exhibition at the Chinese Museum, Melbourne, curated by Joyce Agee and Nicholas Chin and is part of the Grandmothers (2018) project, to launch the newly formed Multicultural Museums Victoria network.

Images: The work installed at the Chinese Museum, May-August 2018, the Waipo invitation and the Multicultural Museums Victoria network Grandmothers program.