A prominent figure in Chinese contemporary art, Song Dong tells his stories of self-expression, familial reconciliation, and lived realities in the landscapes of a perpetually changing China. Through a dense oeuvre of sculpture, installations, performance, photography, and video, his works are often composed with quotidian objects and ephemera, alluding to the impermanence of change while proposing a destabilization of material hierarchies in relationship to personal and global themes. A 1989 graduate in oil painting from the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University in Beijing, Song slowly de-conventionalized his paintings, eventually breaking with it before turning to avant-garde and experimental art forms when he married fellow artist Yin Xiuzhen in 1992. Outstanding projects include Water Diary (1996), wherein the artist documented his daily activity of writing in water on stone and watching it evaporate, and the Eating the City series (2003-2006), enacted across various cities, in which his edible installations highlighted China’s dramatic urbanization and obsessive consumerism.
For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Song expounded his artistic musings on the concept “borrow” as a way for humans to reflect on our transient existence and form connections in a globalized world. Drawing inspirations from both a carnival’s house of mirrors and the traditional Chinese feng shui method of using mirrors and windows to expand interior space by ushering in the external world, Borrow Light (2025) is a participatory spatial installation that aims to create a void-like space that emphasizes the boundless connections between humans while alluding to the fleeting nature of our presence. The diverse chairs and lamps in the installation – all borrowed from private homes – act as resting places and illuminators that facilitate ephemeral moments of contemplation. Playing with fluid elements such as light, reflection, and illusion, Song’s installation immerses the audiences into an infinite universe, where our images and minds become entwined in a silvery, glowing light.
