Heavily influenced by the artist’s immediate surroundings, Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. Public mischief is the term for the crime of wasting police time.Martin Wong (1946–1999, US) is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies in the United States from 1970s to 1990s. The country's Criminal Code makes mischief a hybrid offence, punishable by up to and including life imprisonment if the mischief causes actual danger to human life.

Governed by state law, criminal mischief is committed when a perpetrator, having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he/she has such right, intentionally or recklessly damages property of another person, intentionally participates in the destruction of property of another person, or participates in the reckless damage or destruction of property of another person. Common forms include vandalism, and graffiti. In United States criminal law, mischief is an offense against property that typically involves the intentional or reckless infliction of property damage, defacement, alteration, or destruction of property. It does not require actual damage to property for the offence to be committed financial damage consequential to the act is sufficient, unlike vandalism which requires actual damage to property to form the offence, the latter being defined by section 52 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995. Malicious mischief is an offence against the common law of Scotland. The etymology of the word comes from Old French meschief, which means 'misfortune', from meschever, 'to end badly'.

While the wrongful acts will often involve what is popularly described as vandalism, there can be a legal differentiation between vandalism and mischief. Mischief or malicious mischief is the name for a criminal offenses that is defined differently in different legal jurisdictions.

Malicious mischief 2