Song Dong: Dad and Mom, Don't Worry About Us, We Are All Well

The videos and photographs of Song Dong (born 1966) reveal the social implications of China's booming modernity, and the artist's own attempts to reconcile that boom with its spiritual traditions and its effects on members of his family. Dad and Mom, Don't Worry About Us, We Are All Well is based around a much heralded large-scale installation titled “Waste Not” (2005), comprised of over 10,000 items ranging from pots and basins to blankets, bottle caps, toothpaste tubes and stuffed animals collected by the artist's mother over the course of more than five decades as a way of coping with the death of her husband. A core theme of “Waste Not” is the idea that people, everyday objects and personal stories provide tangible evidence of the impact of politics and history on family life. This volume surveys several works on this theme of material and bodily evidence.