The painting, Man Carrying Sack, embodies the plight of the immigrant with the sack seen as a burden, life's symbolic albatross, more precarious as the labourer has no national or societal status. It is only one in Wong Hoy Cheong's landmark exhibition, Of Migrants & Rubber Trees, where the migrant is shown in action, unlike the bevy of portraits posed notoriously like Wanted Criminals. Of note is they are drawings, in charcoal on paper, like black-and-white photographs for a sense of veracity. The issues of migration, displacement, dislocation and perpetual quest for a better life are very real. The series' anecdotal works of glum and even surly faces are described as "unhappy pictures", with a bit nostalgia, a bit sarcasm and a bit heroic even. Wong Hoy Cheong catapulted back to national visual art prominence when he won the Anugerah Karyawan Seni Visual in 2024. He was named Newsweek's Top 10 Trail-blazers of Asia ('Maverick and Rebels') in 2000 and Top 10 Art & Culture Leaders in the Next Millennium in 1999. He even had the 35th Floor of Deutsch Bank Headquarters in Frankfurt named after him, while Cornell University had a scholarship, H.C. Wong Scholarship, named after him in 'Outstanding Educator. He received his Masters at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Fine Art, Painting) and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Education), and BFA magna cum laude at the Brandeis University, USA, in 1982. He won the Australian Cultural Award in 1992. His international exhibitions include ARS 01 (Helsinki), Kwangju Biennale, Cities On The Move (Vienna), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), Hayward Gallery (London), Fukuoka Triennial and the Asia-Pacific Triennial.