The artist Song Dong, one of the most inventive figures in contemporary Chinese art, has turned the contents of his mother's former home in Beijing, which was also his childhood home, into the installation titled "Waste Not."
Holland Cotter writes: Mr. Song's mother, "Zhao Xiangyua, was born in China in 1938 and died in Beijing in January. For nearly 60 years she lived in the city with her husband and two children in a tiny house crammed with domestic odds and ends — clothes, books, kitchen utensils, toiletries, school supplies, shopping bags, rice bowls, dolls — which were used, then recycled, then indiscriminately hoarded."
When Mr. Song’s father died, in 2002, his mother was inconsolable. She continued to live in the jammed Beijing house, throwing nothing away and obsessively bringing more stuff into it, as if continuing to feather a nest for a now-absent family.
Mr. Song created a neon sign reading, “Dad, don’t worry, Mum and we are fine,” and hung it over the installation.
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Comments
thats amazing.