How Chinese artist Song Dong’s exhibitions of Covid-era works remind us of a ‘universal desire for connection’ lost during the pandemic

Contemporary artist Song Dong’s three shows, currently on in Shanghai, Dangong and New York, feature works made during the pandemic about restrictions in China

Made from glass, waste and even beard trimmings, they critique how time was ‘controlled’, and express gratitude for a post-pandemic return to normal interaction

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Song Dong’s solo exhibition “To Be or Not to Be” at the Shanghai Museum of Glass. In this show, as well as in others in China and the US, the artist highlights the loss of personal connection that came with restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: Shanghai Museum of Glass

Lisa Movius

Published: 4:15am, 18 Jul 2023

The art of Song Dong has always been deeply personal.

Born in 1966, the artist is known for using both his own body and his native Beijing as a canvas to explore ideas of change and impermanence.

For example, he “froze” his own breath on the winter slabs of Tiananmen Square for the performance piece Breathing in 1996, and, like the old men who show off their calligraphy in local parks by writing on the ground in water, Song’s Writing Diary with Water (1995) evaporates soon after he records a fleeting moment on stone.

His family also looms large in his world view. Waste Not (from 2005) is a series of emotional installations assembled from his frugal mother’s lifelong acquisition of humble possessions. And last year, at Pace Gallery’s Hong Kong space, he curated an exhibition of Yin Xiuzhen, his wife and frequent collaborator.

Chinese artist Song Dong. Photo: Shanghai Glass Museum

“Song Dong’s art always explores the experience and process of change in surrounding environments, the constant quest for discourse and stimulation, as well as the openness of possibility,” says Leng Lin, partner and president, Asia of Pace Gallery and, since 2005, his co-creator, along with artists Liu Jianhua, Hong Hao and Xiao Yu, in provocative collective Polit-Sheer-Form Office (PSFO).