Yuchen Song

von Birte Stolte

“Your experiences form you, like a surface over all things. So, you make a cocoon full of memories for yourself.”

Yuchen (she/her) is a very tender and at the same time sensitively direct person. She is determined to look behind the surfaces of dreams, classifications, longings, answers and the most precious moments of her own life. By being used to interacting with, one could say, “dangerous materials” from medical/biological fields, due to her family backgrounds, Yuchen holds a great curiosity for the spaces in-between - e.g. the contrasts and connection points of danger and gentleness or the beauty of laboratory devices. 

She is an aware participant in the dance of the vulnerable and the sharpening ways of life, in her warningly kind as well as critically questioning nature. Her multifaceted view of the world also naturally reflects and finds display in her work as an artist.

“Combination and contrast are a very personal thing.” 

Yuchen’s art circles around sculpture-installations, her feelings about contrasting materials, experimental textures and memories, in all their fragility and deeply underlying meanings. Therefore, the memories Yuchen’s concepts wrap around are called “physical memories”. They try to embody the emotions one holds about certain dear/tragic/loving/truthful/(un)fulfilling … memories. A representative portrayal and not just the pictures that come to mind while remembering. 

One of the most telling works, when looking at Yuchen’s art practice, is her hanging sculpture, a transparent cocoon full of memories. The sculpture melts stockings and thick wires into the silhouette of contrast: 

Bones carve out of the skin, touching the open ground. 

Stockings being ripped apart by a metal skeleton or corset. 

The realities of the waking day crushing the longingly precious promises of long gone and the most tender dreams, moments and memories. 

“Sometimes I feel like we are consuming our time.”