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Memories of the People You Love
Some art that made me cry this week
Some people believe that everyone has two lives, and we will die twice. The first death is the body’s physical death, while the second death is when the last person in this world that knew you is dead and nobody knows who you were anymore.
Song Dong (2022)
This week I watched a short video featuring one of China’s leading contemporary artists, Song Dong, whose work explores memory, relationships, the transience of life and the idea of impermanence. In the video (8 mins) he describes a project he made with his father before he died in 2002 about their relationship. Song talks about how his father used to hug him as a child but as he grew up they gradually stopped physical contact. And yet the memory of his father’s touch lived strongly in his mind:
I found Song’s words and art profoundly moving, as though he was speaking directly to me. His impermanent calligraphic water writing, which disappears while he is still in the process of painting, made me think about the memories I grasp at when I…
