Exploring "Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation"
By Karen Phan
Now on view at the St Andrews Museum is the exhibition titled “Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation” featuring a group of Scotland based artists who delve into how their dual identity can be witnessed through a variety of artistic mediums such as sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles, installations and more. Social justice curator, Cat Dunn, in partnership with Fife Contemporary, curated a space embracing the ongoing dialogue of dual identity to exhibit how this sense of self can be emulated in works of Scottish craft artists today. Artists explore ways in which their experiences have been shaped by the dualism and expression of cultural heritage. This article will highlight one of the many artists involved in the exhibition, which is Rae-Yen Song’s installation of ◉yap◉.
Rae-Yen Song, ◉yap◉, 2021. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.
◉yap◉ is a figure created by the artist among an everchanging universe populated by a network of characters. Song’s incorporation of family appears across the artist’s practice most notably here in the installation where song reimagines how familial and ancestral logics and be shaped through fantasy. They invoke the process of remembrance and veneration that can be witnessed through various forms. The sculpture becomes a physical monument representing the conversations and whispers that are carried to understand the unknown picture. By doing so, Song creates a visual language that shares the sense of self identity for cultural survival amid living in the diaspora. Furthermore, examining how assimilation and nationalism complicates the sense of understand one’s duality and connectiveness to home. Song makes effort to channel conversations and resist the violence of racism, forced assimilation, and institutional policies that promotes hostile environments for those facing immigration.
Rae-Yen Song, ▷▥◉▻, 2021. Dundee Contemporary Arts. Image: Ruth Clark.
The installation of ◉yap◉ sits rooted on the ground with the impression that it could at any moment, take off. With its gold and silver beads made from imitation rice, scattered upon the blue cotton fabric stitched alongside patches of silk and fur. Its shape encircles the floor engulfing the space with a challenging stance. And the head with its bold spikes and red ornament, contrasts the fluidity that its dressing invokes a sense of playfulness and imagination. The artist has described this installation as a “dance with, and reimagining of, a drifting, spectral ancestor; the shimmering skin of memories and myths illuminating the dark abyss.”
◉yap◉, is also accessible on www.songdynasty.life, which serves as an intricate archive embodying a familial past and future. It is a public yet deeply personal repository shaped by ancestral narratives, manifested through a costume crafted in an envisioned dialogue with a departed grandfather. The act of creating this archive becomes a ritual, allowing the artist to intimately engage with and narrate the complex, emotional stories of ancestors marked by themes of crossing, migration, loss, survival, and labor.
Rae-Yen Song, a versatile visual artist, with works such as drawing, sculpture, installation, costume, video, sound, performance, and collaborative work with family. The artist's creations explore self-mythologizing as a survival strategy, utilizing fabulation to construct a visually enriching world influenced by autobiography, ancestral journeys, Taoist philosophy, family rituals, multi-species interdependency, and science fiction. Through world-building, Song establishes an imaginative self-definition, rooted in familial logics, creating an alternative reality free from linear concepts of space and time. This approach allows Song to resist colonial norms, producing multidimensional personal narratives that challenge conventional notions. The narratives blend humor, empathy, and absurdity simultaneously addressing broader political themes such as foreignness, identity, survival, and the sense of belonging. Song’s portfolio can be viewed on her website at https://rae-yen-song.com/.
“Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation” runs from October 2023 until February 2024, and will move to the Kirkcaldy Galleries in the following month until May 2024. If you’re interested in learning more, you can visit https://www.onfife.com/event/crafted-selves-the-unfinished-conversation/.
Bibliography
OnFife. “Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation.” Events. Accessed December 10, 2023. https://www.onfife.com/event/crafted-selves-the-unfinished-conversation/
Fife Contemporary. “Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation.” Accessed November 8, 2023. https://www.fcac.co.uk/event/crafted-selves-the-unfinished-conversation/.
Fife Contemporary. “Rae-Yen Song.” Accessed November 1, 2023. https://www.fcac.co.uk/artist/rae-yen-song/.
Song, Rae-Yen. “▷▥◉▻.” Accessed December 12, 2023. https://rae-yen-song.com/.