Crossing the Third Bridge

Crossing the Third Bridge traces the shifting identities of the Chinese diaspora through 华侨 (Hua Qiao), a term once applied to those who left Qing China and now carried by generations shaped more by memory, distance, and translation than by direct migration. Artists Kenneth Tam (USA), Lee Mok Yee (Malaysia), Ming Wong (Singapore), MM Yu (Philippines), Sean Lean (Malaysia), Tintin Wulia (Indonesia/Australia) and Wong Chee Meng (Malaysia) navigate these complex intersections of heritage and experience, moving from the ancestral homeland to the country of birth, and arriving at a liminal space where identity is reshaped by migration and generational change.

For later generations, crossing this bridge involves balancing inherited customs with new cultural landscapes, navigating ancestral trauma, family expectations, and shifting societal norms, including patriarchal roles. It is an internal journey guided by memory, family bonds, and personal reflection, where questions of belonging persist: do I conform, or can I exist in between? Even without direct ties to China, individuals engage with the complexities of 华侨 (Hua Qiao), and identity remains fluid, shaped by history, memory, and contemporary life in ongoing dialogue while forging new forms of expression.

Across installation, photography, moving image, and performance, Malaysian and international artists of Chinese descent occupy a space where diaspora engages continually with memory, dissonance, and choice. Some navigate personal archives marked by absence or thread along interiors brimming with objects preserved for sentiment. Others trace the fragile choreography of emotion across generations, engage with Cantonese soap operas that unsettle heteronormative narratives, or revive nearly lost linguistic forms. At times, the artists turn toward their communities, highlighting emergent patterns, silences, and habits, while touches of absurdity emerge unexpectedly, creating space for reflection, allowing identities to unfold and shift in real time.

As Malaysian writer Tash Aw reflects, “So many of us have multiple identities that it is tiring and pointless trying to reduce them into an easily digestible explanation. We have learned to own and celebrate the messiness of our histories.” At its core, this exhibition moves within that messiness, portraying the diasporic experience as a continual process of fraying and mending, slipping between what is lost and what remains.

Curator: Mikhail Vanan

‘Crossing the Third Bridge‘ is featured at Wei-Ling Gallery and Wei-Ling Contemporary from 16 December 2025 – 24 January 2026.

Wei-Ling Gallery is located at No 8, Jalan Scott, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Admission hours are Tuesday – Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 10am – 5pm.

For further assistance, please contact +60322601106 or e-mail info@weiling-gallery.com