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Opening 19 July | Group Exhibition "Rooms of Our Own"

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Rooms of Our Own

Artists: Watermelon Sisters [Yu Cheng-Ta + Ming Wong], Ming Wong, Zhi Wei, BuBu de la Madeleine

19 July ― 6 September 2025

Opening reception: Saturday, 19 July, 4 — 6 pm

"Rooms of our own" refers to more than a physical space or site, it hopes to examine strategies that artists have deployed to resist homogenization. Through various mediums including painting, photography, installation, and video, these artists shatter the constraints that are imposed on creativity and taste. They exaggerate, role-play and parody to expose the ‘artificialness’ of stereotypes, and to resist simple binary thinking. With a certain ingenuity, they playfully carve out inclusive spaces and rooms of their own. Where all are embraced, and where all are irresistibly drawn to their aesthetics, and strength.

Watermelon Sisters is a performance art duo formed by Yu Cheng-Ta (b. 1983, Taiwan, China) and Ming Wong (b. 1971, Singapore) in 2017. They are a pair of fairy sisters, carrying out the mission of spreading love to those who struggle with boundaries and categories created by mankind. Roppongi Video Diary (2025) documents a performance by the Watermelon Sisters at the Roppongi Art Night, Tokyo in 2024. Clad in vibrant kimonos and carrying traditional umbrellas, the duo roamed the streets of Roppongi with exaggerated Japanese-style stage makeup and performed a vintage J-pop song.

Role-playing manifests in Ming Wong's photographic series Susan Wongtag Berlin Diary (2025). The persona "Susan Wongtag" draws inspiration from American writer, cultural theorist, and filmmaker Susan Sontag. Set within a library, the bookshelves, coffee cups, and monochromatic imagery evoke our imagination of Sontag's iconic appearance. Wong, whose cultural background and gender identity are remarkably different from Sontag, evolves into an intelligent and sophisticated Sontag. Their dispositions show strength, and an unwavering persistence. Sontag lived a life unafraid of criticism, and was unashamed in creating new ‘rooms’ and spaces for alternative thought and interpretations.

With a gentle yet audacious aesthetic, Zhi Wei (b. 1997, Beijing, China) utilizes the image of the orchid mantis in Autograph (2025) and Bon Appétit (2025). They are in realized in stark contrast to one another—one bright and one dark. In Autograph, an orchid mantis has evolved to mimic an orchid’s appearance through an evolutionary biological process known as mimicry—an evolved resemblance of an organism with another object or being. The evolved Ms. Mantis rests easily with closed eyes amidst layers of gauze, lace, and gingham and jacquard fabrics. At the bottom-half of the painting, Madonna’s signature is rendered with rhinestone-style buttons in an autograph format. The glamorous Ms. Mantis emerges as a starlet. In Bon Appétit, a glistening plate lays atop a gingham patterned fabric. The silhouettes of two mantises have come together to form a coincidental heart shape. Translucent lace fabric and gauze provide glimpses of events that may have occurred. We are looking at the aftermath of a post-mating scene. The female mantis consumes the male immediately after mating, and an empty plate remains. Rendered solely in monochrome, the work is a stylistic homage to black-and-white silent films. The deliberate symmetry also serves as an oblique reference to Art Deco.

In the fantasy world constructed by BuBu de la Madeleine (b. 1961, Osaka, Japan), mermaids are reimagined as "gender wanderers", whose tail fins resemble plant structures, releasing pollen-like reproductive cells. When individual cells meet, "seeds of life" are conceived and born. In this exhibition, fabric sculptures that represent the tail fins of mermaids face each other, and spherical objects that are made of cotton, colored cloth and white gauze float among the works, symbolize pollen and seeds. BuBu's paintings manifest the same worldview. By stripping away the gender symbols of mermaids, she weakens the significance of gender roles and encourages viewers to re-examine the interdependencies and connections binding all life.

Ota Fine Arts Shanghai invites you to enter these "rooms" constructed by four (groups of) artists. Through the dialectical interplay of mimicry and deconstruction, and performance and reality, they continue to fascinate us with their ‘audacious’ approaches.

Images:

(Part) Watermelon Sisters, Roppongi Diary, 2024, Archival pigment print, 35 x 52.5 cm

Zhi Wei, Autograph, 2025, Acrylic on jacquard and plaid; lace, mesh, buttons and thread, 200 x 160 cm, Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Balice Hertling

About the Artists

Watermelon Sisters performance duo was formed in 2017 by artists Yu Cheng-Ta (b. 1983, Taiwan, China) and Ming Wong (b. 1971, Singapore). Taking their inspiration from 1960s Chinese Opera cinema and the works of Taiwanese film director Tsai Ming-liang, they adopt the persona of gender-fluid sisters through art, music and dance. They participated in “Roppongi Art Night 2024”, Roppongi town, Tokyo, Japan (2024), ”Aichi Triennale 2022 - STILL ALIVE”, Aichi prefecture, Japan (2022), “Watermelon Sisters Go Camping in Paris”, Centre national de la danse, Pantin [France] (2019) and more.

Ming Wong (b. 1971, Singapore) studied Diploma of Fine Arts (Chinese Art) at Nanyang Academy, Singapore and MFA (Fine Art Media) at the Slade School of Art, University College London, he currently lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions include Windows On The World (Part 2), Ota Fine Arts 7 Chome, Tokyo, Japan (2024), Cosmic Theatre, Ota Fine Arts, Shanghai, China (2024), Cosmic Theatre, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan (2023), Pictures from the Wayang Spaceship, Ota Fine Arts, Singapore (2023), Rhapsody in Yellow, Berliner Festspiele (2023); Fake Daughter's Secret Room of Shame, ASAKUSA, Tokyo, Japan (2019); Next Year / L’Année Prochaine, Ullens Center of Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2015); Me in Me, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2013); Ming Wong: Making Chinatown, REDCAT, Los Angeles, USA (2012); Life of Imitation, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan / CAST Gallery, Tasmania, Australia / Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA (2011) / Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2010) / Singapore Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Italy (2009). Group exhibitions include No Boundaries, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2025); In Be-Tween: 5(,)yrs, Comma Space, Singapore (2024); The 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns, White Bay Power Station, Sydney, Australia (2024); Signals: How Video Transformed The World, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States (2023); Pier Paolo Pasolini: Tutto è santo. The political body, MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2022); Global(e) Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020), Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence, Chengdu, China (2018); Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2019), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2017), and numerous art tri-/bi-ennials in Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul, Busan, Gwangju, Sydney, Brisbane, Aichi, Taichung, Hawai'i, Lyon, Liverpool, Dakar, Jakarta. His works are also in the collections of Singapore Art Museum; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hammer Museum, LA; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; Tanoto Foundation, Singapore; Cc Foundation, Shanghai.

Zhi Wei was born in 1997 in Beijing, China. They currently live and work in Shanghai. They completed their BFA degree from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, in 2019. Fascinated by the serendipity of meanings fermented in the auteur’s careful assemblage of heterogeneous elements, they draw inspiration from fragments of mundanity, popular comedy, fable, history, and scientific trivia. Working with lived experience and external references through digital imageries and unconventional materials, Zhi Wei explores the entangled interdependence among the image-making, the act of painting, and the surface, and toes the line between object and image, concealment and exposure, materiality and phantasy, through which the tension between superficiality and sincerity is interrogated on both formal and emotional levels. Zhi Wei’s recent exhibitions include: Hands-On, Galerie Balice Hertling, Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China (2025); A Small Lie, Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, France (2024); El Otro, El Mismo, Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China (2024); Supercrowds / supercommunity, TANK Q, TANK Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2024); Rayon Jouets, Hangar Y, Meudon, Paris, France (2024); Palai Penang, Homestead, George Town, Penang, Malaysia (2024); Palai Project, Palazzo Tamborino Cezzi, Lecce, Italy (2023); White Holes, 798 CUBE, Beijing, China (2023); Exposition N°120 (maybe), Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, France (2022); The Tale of Tales, G Museum, Nanjing, China (2022); TAG New Contemporary: Sailing, TAG Art Museum, Qingdao, China (2022); Order Copied: Changing the Reference Frame, Magician Space, Beijing, China (2022); Watching the Fire from the Shore, Linseed Projects, Shanghai, China (2021); A Couple of: the Dual Machanism of the New Generation of Asian Artists, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2021).

Bubu de la Madeleine (b. 1961, Osaka, Japan) currently lives and works in Nara. She completed her BA in Concept and Media Planning at Kyoto City University of Arts. BuBu joined an artist collective, Dumb Type and appeared in their acclaimed performance "S/N" (1994-96). After "S/N", she started to work as a solo artist and collaboratively, producing performances, moving images and writing. At the same time, she committed herself to advocacy for people living with minorities. Major solo exhibitions include “POLLEN AND SEEDS”, Ota Fine Arts 7 CHOME, Tokyo, Japan (2024); “A Mermaid’s Territory – Flags and Internal Organs”, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan (2022) and "Territory of Mermaid", Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan (2004). She also participated in group exhibitions such as “Collection 2: Undo, Redo”, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2025); "Collection2 Body–––Body", The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2024); “Fanatic Heart”, Para Site, Hong Kong (2022); "The Ecology of Expression: Remaking Our Relations with the world", Arts Maebashi, Maebashi (2019-20) and "JAPAN UNLIMITED", frei_raum Q21 exhibition space, Museums Quartier Wien, Vienna (2019).