Song Dong: 36 Calendars

Asia Art Archive welcomed artist Song Dong for a two-part residency in 2011 and 2012.

Known for his innovative conceptual videos and photography reflecting the societal implications of modern China, Song utilised his residency to embark on a year-long project that involved his re-writing the last 36 years of history—including socio-political history, personal experience, and art history—from a personal perspective in the form of 36 hand-drawn wall calendars. The project was presented in the form of an exhibition, his first solo presentation in Hong Kong, with a public and collective component in collaboration with M+.

Song Dong was born in Beijing in 1966. He graduated from the fine arts department of Capital Normal University in Beijing in 1989. Part of Beijing's avant-garde performance art community, Song incorporates a number of artistic approaches in his work—including performance, photography, projection, video, and installation—to question notions of perception and articulate the ephemeral nature of existence and tradition. Bridging the divides between the poetic and political and the personal and universal, Song also uses art as a means of exploring or unlocking relationships with his family, the public, and even physical spaces, history, or objects.