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Current teacher at Place des Arts (2025/2026 season)
Biography
Marley (Ming) Kong is an interdisciplinary artist based in Coquitlam, and has exhibited in Beijing and Taipei. She began training in Chinese calligraphy at age seven and holds a BFA from Jiangsu Normal University and a MFA from the Chinese National Academy of Arts in Beijing. She works in mixed-media and her materials have included found objects and historical photographs. Influenced by her training in calligraphy, her works emphasize tactility, flow, and gestural marks. In terms of themes and narratives, her art is driven by her immigrant experience and exposure to cultural diversity, and thereby explores shifting cultural identities and memories through semiotics and conceptualism.
Artist Statement
My work is dictated by the existential challenges to my training in Chinese calligraphy in face of the medium-diverse and conceptually-driven nature of contemporary art. Shaped by my immigrant experience, my removal from traditional calligraphy environments has prompted me to reexamine all aspects of the discipline, from materials to art historical and philosophical ideals. The erosion of calligraphy in my practice reflects an uncanny shift in my identity, where cultural tradition cedes in favour of the modern self. Yet, the role of tradition is never absolved entirely and co-exists with modernity in a state of uncertainty and change.
In the early 19th Century, Chinese immigrants entering Canada and the U.S. were regularly detained in immigration buildings, where hundreds of poems recording their experience in detention have been found carved on walls. In my two works, two such poems are executed in calligraphy on top of digitally-altered historic photographs. The former depicts the exterior of the Immigration Building that once stood in Victoria, B.C., and the latter a dining hall in the Immigration Station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. My rendering of the poems in calligraphy evokes a sense of historical authenticity; however, this is juxtaposed by the fluorescent colours and the superimposition of the text, which transcends the image back to the present day. In doing so, I not only highlight the past anger, frustration, hope, and despair of the detainees, but also reflect on the immense progress made on racial equality since these poems were composed.
Instagram: @calligraphymingkong