Wong Hoy Cheong was born in Penang, the grandson of an immigrant from south China who married into a well-to-do Straits Chinese family. occasionally painting quiet, introspective works, he is best known for paintings and performances which are overtly political. The ambivalence of the transplanted Chinese psyche comes through in touching works like Aspirations of the Working Class, portraying a couple and their two children posing stiffly in a curious combination of Chinese andWestern clothes.