Review | Late Chinese artist, influencer and Pierre Cardin collaborator Madame Song celebrated in slightly overdone M+ museum exhibition in Hong Kong
- Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China charts the life and works of Chinese artist and influencer Song Huai-kuei, who died in 2006
- The exhibition at the M+ museum of outfits, photos, films and art, like the shoulders of the Pierre Cardin fashion Song helped sell, feels overly padded
The approach to M+ museum from Elements mall is currently lined with a series of posters, which begin with the question: “Who is Madame Song”?
Further posters provide answers: “Artist. Entrepreneur. Fashionista. Influencer.”
Song Huai-kuei (1937-2006) might have been puzzled by some of those labels but, in its latest special exhibition “Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China”, M+ is keen to position her as a strong woman for our times.
Her life, however, was undoubtedly shaped by two men – her husband, Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov, and the French fashion designer Pierre Cardin.
Varbanov, who specialised in fabric sculpture, met Song in 1954 when, as a student, he came to Beijing where Song was studying at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Their marriage in 1956 was the first between a Chinese citizen and a foreigner since the founding of the PRC.
