We Don’t Need Another Hero

“We don’t need another way home, all we want is life beyond the Thunderdome.”
— Tina Turner
‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ brings together artists Jay Tan and Yin Yin Wong in a duo exhibition that challenges the seductive pull of heroic archetypes. Drawing from personal histories, family mythologies, and cultural iconography, the artists deconstruct inherited ideals of masculinity, morality, and exceptionalism — offering instead an archive of gestures, characters, props and signs that tell more complex and ambiguous stories.

Tan and Wong trace the silhouette of the “hero in white”, commonly a figure in Chinese cultural memory symbolising nobility, sacrifice, and moral clarity, and ask: what does this figure demand from us? Is he an inspiration, or a burden? Can we tease his stoicism, mistranslate his nobility, or disassemble his myth?

Positioned between class strata, nations, and accents, the exhibition reflects on the diasporic experience of moving both up and across: through society, through narrative structures, through (gendered) expectations. From shopkeepers and opera singers to professional golfers and unmaintained aquaria, the works invoke unlikely figures of heroism. These are individuals whose lives speak through steady endurance, invisible labour, and quiet rebellion.

Set against the backdrop of a world that constantly asks for more sacrifice, more transformation, and more performance, the artists invite us to queer the script. They encourage us to trace alternative arcs, to honour the shelf-life, the closing hour, the counter-top. The question is no longer how to become a hero. It becomes a matter of how to live beyond the score entirely.

‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ is featured at Wei-Ling Gallery and Wei-Ling Contemporary from 3 – 26 July 2025

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.

Exhibition is open by appointment only. For appointments and further assistance, please contact +60322601106 or e-mail siewboon@weiling-gallery.com

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

YIN YIN WONG (B.1988, NL)

Yin Yin Wong is an artist and cultural worker based in Rotterdam. Working across various media including performance, drawing and site-specific installation, they look for bridges and juxtapositions that challenge both their Dutch cultural heritage as well as their Malaysian-Chinese background. Taking inspiration from their childhood growing up in the restaurant of their parents, their work offers intimate glimpses into a diaspora that is best known for their silent and self-sacrificing resilience. By employing humour, hospitality and eclectic material sensibility, they connect their lived experience to complex cultural histories of migration and displacement.

Their work has been exhibited at Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn; BRUTUS, Rotterdam; Pocoapoco, Oaxaca (MX); A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Natasha– Singapore Biennale ’22 and Venice Biennale ’22. Yin Yin Wong is an educator at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, a Supervisory Board member of Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, an advisor at Stimuleringsfonds Creative Industries, Rotterdam and member of the selection committee at Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht.

Click to view CV.

JAY TAN (B. 1982, UK)

Jay Tan is an artist and educator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. They combine everyday materials with recontextualised personal and pop cultural references to make sculptures and installations that feature figurines, low-res video and other moving parts. This decorative vernacular they think of as Aesthetic Rubble is used to process the feelings that arise as they try to learn about large systems of knowledge like Chinese religious practices or macroeconomics. 

They have shown work at Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam; Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam; Tent, Rotterdam; the CACC, Paris; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Ellen de Bruijne Projects and Gallerie van Gelder, Amsterdam; Futura, Prague; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; Vleeshal, Middleburg; the CAC, Vilnius; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hollybush Gardens, London; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam and RongWrong, Amsterdam.

Click to view CV.

Notes:

Both Jay Tan and Yin Yin Wong use ‘they/them’ pronouns and identify as non-binary, a term that describes gender identities that are not exclusively male or female.