Song Dong: Waste Not

I visited a really interesting exhibition at the Barbican in London by Chinese artist Song Dong. It was an installation of over 10,000 possessions collected by his mother over five decades. After his father died his mother became very depressed, she had always hoarded and collected and this only became worse, she used the daily life objects to fill the emptiness after his father’s death.  The rest of the family had to store what she couldn’t fit in her house; Song Dong had the idea to include her in his work as an artist, so her possessions became his art. The family gets together for every exhibition to lay out the items and rekindle memories. Organising her possessions made her happy and when all laid out they told the story of her life.  She kept everything from empty toothpaste tubes, old toothbrushes, bottle caps, every hand bag she ever owned; hundreds of plastic bags all folded neatly in triangles, just like my Chinese flatmates do.  None of the items were particularly worth anything apart from sentimental value.  I like the Chinese value of ‘waste not, want not’ but I don’t think I could take it as far as this.