TURIN.- From 23 October 2026 to 27 June 2027, MAO, Turin is hosting Song Dong. Soul Out, the first solo exhibition in Italy of works by the artist Song Dong (Beijing, 1966), curated by Li Zhenhua and Davide Quadrio, with Francesca Filisetti and Rebecca Ricci, and with the curatorial and scholarly contribution of Manuela Lietti. The exhibition is conceived as a site-specific project that involves the whole museum, transforming it into a narrative device in which Song Dong's works enter into dialogue with the permanent collection and the historical architecture of Palazzo Mazzonis.
Bringing together some of the artist's most iconic installations, along with an archive of photographs and videos of performances dating from the 1990s to today, Song Dong. Soul Out traces back over more than thirty years of work, highlighting a practice that intertwines individual experience and collective history, private memory and social transformation, while offering a window onto contemporary China.
Song Dong's work is rooted in the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, ancient masters of Taoist philosophy, reformulating their concepts of the fluidity of existence and non-action using an intuitive approach that is also influenced by Zen philosophy. His language also engages with some of the main international art currents of the second half of the 20th century, from Italian Arte Povera to Japanese Mono-Ha and American Minimalism and Conceptual Art. While deeply tied to Taoist and Buddhist philosophy, Song Dong's poetics draw on a multiplicity of experiences and sensibilities. Through minimal gestures, repetition and the transformation of ordinary and quotidian materials, the artist's work offers a reflection on time, impermanence and the fragility of the human condition.
The exhibition opens with Believe, a light installation adapted to the museum's spaces that employs an evocative cascade of red light to introduce the immersive and sensory nature of the show. Through a play on words, the work reflects on the meaning of trust, generating a network of reciprocal mistrust that involves both the relationship with the other and that with ourselves.
One of the exhibition's central works is the monumental installation Waste Not, presented in Italy for the first time after being shown at the Barbican Centre, London; MoMA, New York; the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among other venues. This work, inspired by the Dadaist practice of appropriation and Duchamp's concept of the ready-made, includes all the material goods painstakingly accumulated by the artist's mother, Zhao Xiangyuan (including the wooden frame of her home), her passion for collecting having become an obsession after her husband's death in 2002. More than 10,000 everyday objects – including buttons, containers of various kind, fabric cuttings, chairs, tables, used clothing, abandoned toys, old magazines, telephones, empty tubes of toothpaste, bottle caps, food containers, bars of soap, shopping bags, stacked of boxes of medicine – transform his mother's "collection" into a reflection on memory, accumulation and the logic of production and consumption that defines today's world.
In addition to Waste Not, other works in the exhibition also explore the theme of family relationships, central to Song Dong's practice, including Touching My Father and My Daughter is my Four Seasons, which are devoted, respectively and as indicated by the titles, to his father and his daughter, exploring emotional dynamics and the various forms of interaction within the family unit.
A work of special significance in the exhibition is Borrow Light, a participatory installation set up in Salone Mazzonis that synthesises the poetics of Song Dong and the relationship that MAO aims to build with its own community. Presented at the São Paulo Biennial in 2025, the work is formed by hundreds of lamps lent by residents in response to a call launched by the museum in May 2026. Inspired by the houses of mirrors found in fun fairs and by traditional Chinese feng shui, the installation creates a perceptual space through a complex system of lights, mirrors and reflections, evoking the ephemeral and relational nature of existence. The lamps are at once materials used to create the work and material traces of the personal stories of their owners.
As with previous exhibitions, Song Dong. Soul Out is also accompanied by Evolving Soundscapes, a programme of music and performances curated by Chiara Lee and freddie Murphy, as well as talks, screenings, educational activities and workshops.
The exhibition will be complemented by richly illustrated bilingual catalogue, in Italian and in English, containing new texts and essays by the curatorial team and invited scholars as well as in-depth discussion of the works on view.
With this project, MAO is continuing its exploration of possible reinterpretations of works in the museum's permanent collection through dialogue with contemporary art. After Chiharu Shiota's monographic exhibition, the museum is again dialoguing with the core of the Chinese funerary collection, which mainly comprises objects of symbolic and ritual value.
As stated by MAO Director Davide Quadrio, "The development of MAO's exhibition programme is a long-term process, rooted in relational networks and institutional partnerships and views the museum as a many-sided organism in which everything moves towards the One, or the existence of a museum of meaning: human, social, cultural and political. Viewed from this perspective, this exhibition develops as an expanded portrait of the artist. His works are distributed across the museum in constant dialogue with the permanent collection, contributing to the definition of MAO as a living organism in continuous transformation and relation with its audience."
The audio-visual content will also be available in Italian Sign Language (LIS), reflecting MAO's commitment to the accessibility and inclusivity of the visitor experience.
Song Dong was born in Beijing in 1966. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University in 1989 and now lives and works in Beijing. As one of the most internationally influential artists, Song Dong's distinctive artistic language is rooted in his open-ended practice and permeated with Eastern philosophies, garnering him wide attention and acclaim in the art world. Since the early 1990s, Song has been actively engaged in the development of Chinese contemporary art with numerous groundbreaking event-based art activities.
He practices with diverse media spanning performance, video, installation, photography, conceptual painting, and theater, and has participated in exhibition and event curations. He specializes in utilizing folkloric and mundane language in everyday life and culture to create inclusive dialogues under globalization, seamlessly synthesizing profound ideas with sensual experiences. Song's work discusses the relationship between life and art through an Eastern lens and explores the transient nature of the human condition, practicing his art and living his life with the idea of "no boundaries."
Song Dong has participated in numerous important international art exhibitions including the Sao Paulo Biennale (2025), Documenta13 (2012), Venice Biennale (2011), the Sao Paulo Biennale (2004), the Gwangju Biennale (2006, 2002, 1995), etc.
His solo exhibitions were held at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Groninger Museum (Groningen), the Kunsthalle (Hamburg), the Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai) among others.
Song has won awards including the Grand Award presented by the Artron Art China (AAC) Video and Installation Artist of the Year (2017), the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) for Outstanding Achievement (2014), the Power 100 of Chinese Contemporary Art: Artist of the Year (2012) and the Gwangju Biennale (2006).
His works are collected by important museums and art institutions such as Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), M+ (Hong Kong), and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), among other important museums and art institutions.
