AT BEN RONGEN and Joan Cheong’s private home gallery in Sungai Ara, rows of blue-and-white porcelain line the walls. It is not quite a China house, but something more evocative; entering it is as if one were stepping into the Wan Li itself, the shipwreck discovered in 2002 off the coast of Terengganu. The ship is referred to as the “Wan Li shipwreck” because the porcelain it carried was made during the reign of Emperor Wan Li.
In the space Rongen has curated over two decades, part studio and part archive, ceramic shards from the Wan Li shipwreck are arranged like relics. Some have been made into jewellery and others set onto small sculptural pieces. The rest remain untouched, displayed just as they were when they were lifted off the seabed.
These are the final remnants of the Wan Li shipwreck, a Portuguese vessel that sank roughly six nautical miles (about 10km) off Tanjung Jara in the early 1600s. The site was discovered when fishermen began finding fragments of pottery in their trawl nets. Of the original four tonnes of ceramics recovered during excavation, only about 300kg remain.
