“The British people always say that after eating durian they want to take off their clothes,” the durian magnate FAMEME says with a deadpan expression in the film Duri-Empire (2024). “Because durian is a warming type of food,” he says after a giveaway pause, qualifying his statement. FAMEME is a longstanding persona created and performed by Taiwan-born artist Yu Cheng-Ta. He is framed as a rich third-generation owner of a durian empire, marketing the Southeast Asian fruit at a global scale and inventing durian-derived products that promise consumers a better, longer and healthier life. Developed across several projects, layers of new context are added to FAMEME’s life story and identity with each new work. His current exhibition, The Return of Raja Durian at Blank Canvas, an independent arts space in Georgetown, Penang, in Malaysia, extends the FAMEME myth by furnishing him with a past and a family history.

On view until February 9, 2025, the exhibition begins to establish FAMEME’s storied lineage in the durian industry – he was born in Penang in 1983, an accompanying note tells us, describing FAMEME as “a celebrity, entrepreneur, designer and singer in promoting durians as a trendy lifestyle icon”. Cheng-Ta doubles up as the exhibition’s co-curator, partnering with critic and art historian Louis Ho. The FAMEME persona was originally created for the Performa Biennial in New York in 2019. Realised across multiple projects in the United States, South Korea and Taiwan, Cheng-Ta calls each new project a “corporation”, in line with FAMEME’S tycoon persona. In the Museum of Durian (2019), FAMEME offered his take on American public spaces that package consumerist nostalgia for their audiences by dedicating museums to collections of kitschy objects from contemporary life. In 2020, he went on to make a Durian Exercise Room (2020) at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, tapping into a growing pandemic-era preoccupation with health and wellness. The pandemic also pushed FAMEME into new modes of audience engagement. Moving from museum-centric iterations, Cheng-Ta began to travel in the persona within Taiwan, making Durian Pharmaceutical (2020) for the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, where FAMEME begins to vouch for a new durian-based product, MST (MISOHTHORNII), which promises sweeping transformations to its users, including an ability to “make you smile again”. 

In developing FAMEME, Cheng-Ta draws on growing influencer cultures and depictions of Asian men in popular culture. Museum of Durian came on the heels of the film Crazy Rich Asians (2018), which attracted criticism for its casting of biracial actors to play ethnically Chinese characters. “How has this kind of Asian male [identity] been shaped in the Western mass media? There's Bruce Lee. And otherwise, most of the guys are nerdy, like supporting actors, not the main character,” he said in a conversation with STIR. 

For over a decade now, Cheng-Ta has cultivated modes of what he terms “life theatre” in his practice, working with non-actors on video to stage situations that draw on the real and the fictional, filming reality-style productions that would eventually feed into an interest in live performance. In Practising LIVE (2014), he invited seven art professionals to stage a family gathering, drawing on their real-life experience in the arts in their on-stage personas. “There were playful structures but [they addressed] very serious issues. I’ve done a lot of institutional critique through durational performance,” Cheng-Ta said of his work.

With recent iterations in Asia, Cheng-Ta has sought to use regional history, politics and society to shape FAMEME. He attributes this interest to his Taiwanese origins, the uncertainty wrought by Taiwan’s contentious relationship with China and thus with other nation states and institutional forces (for example, at the Olympic Games, the country goes by ‘Chinese Taipei’). “You need to navigate how you interact with the world. In a way, you are undefined; I could call it a country of queerness, right? It’s a fluid identity,” Cheng-Ta said. 

In curious ways, FAMEME’s latest innings, as the diasporic son who returns home to honour his family legacy, also mirrors the journeys of the founders of Blank Canvas. STIR spoke to management consultant and art collector Kwong Yee Leong, one of the space’s two founders. Kwong Yee returned to Penang during the pandemic, seeing a need for an independent arts institution that offered space for process-based work by contemporary artists. “[The space] allows me to do something with the collection, and invite artists that I collect to collaborate with Blank Canvas. In a way, I see it as an evolution of my collecting,” Kwong Yee said to STIR. 

In Duri-Empire, which is part of the exhibition at Blank Canvas alongside other material marginalia, including a golden durian opener, photographs from FAMEME’s past and a music video, we see snapshots of Cheng-Ta’s life in Penang; much to the annoyance of his reel-life older sister FALALA, he panders to crowds of fans and admirers. “Father always said to me, as a Chinese in business, we have to be humble. We have to maintain a low profile,” FALALA stresses, as the camera pans to FAMEME introducing a new durian variant at a boisterous party. FAMEME is filmed from intimate angles, the camera giving us close glimpses of his crooked teeth, his smile, the motions of his hands as he cuts into a durian. Being a tycoon in the public eye opens up room for absurdity. In one frame, as a “family friend” reminisces about FAMEME’s relationship with his father and his slow acquiescence to his durian-growing roots, we see FAMEME joyfully running through a greenhouse, holding a rubber water hose and splashing water about as he runs. As a mockumentary, Duri-Empire also speaks to the wave of reality television shows that give audiences a look into rich people’s lives, chronicling their complex social dynamics (Bling Empire, Dubai Bling), offering a gendered setting for gossip and intrigue (The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives) or eliciting shock and awe in real estate-themed shows (Selling Sunset, Owning Manhattan) where property is bought and sold in a staggering showcase of power and money.

At the end of Duri-Empire, with his back to the camera, FAMEME finally takes off his sunglasses, baring his eyes to an audience for the very first time. In 2025, Cheng-Ta plans to continue an exploration of FAMEME as a music video star, drawing on pop idol cultures and fandoms in his performances for a new iteration of the project in Tokyo. 

'The Return of Raja Durian' is on view at Blank Canvas until February 9, 2025.