The NS Interview: Song Dong, artist

“For me, to have nothing and something are the same thing”

(Photo By Song Dong at the Curve gallery, Barbican)

Your new show, “Waste Not“, comprises 10,000 objects your mother accumulated over five decades. What’s your favourite?

The soap that looks like a stone is very old and hard. I didn’t like the soaps, but my mother kept them all. On my wedding day she gave them all to me as a gift. I don’t need them – I use a washing machine! But the soap is my favourite object. At that time I just knew it as soap; now I think of it as love. My mother gave me the love.

Your mother passed away in 2009. Do you feel her presence in the exhibition?
Yes. She had an accident trying to save the life of a bird in a very tall tree and fell. That was really sad for me. But before she died we worked together on this project. She told me stories and we published a book. Our whole family works on this installation each time [it’s going on display], and we feel my mother is still there. Sometimes we find an object we don’t recognise, so my sister and I try to remember: what was that time?

You’ve shown “Waste Not” in eight galleries around the world. Do you plan where the objects will fit each time?
Yes because the location, the space, the size is always different. And this work, I think, is not only an installation, but a family event. So we [me, my sister and wife and daughter] still organise the things each time.