Photo 77 #366photos: Wu jin qi yong

31 March 2012

I spent the morning going through a drawer of old clothes. I don't open this drawer often but I was in search of 1980s fashion for an 80s-themed birthday party that evening. I've always been a bit of a hoarder, keeping things for sentimental reasons. I still have my first pair of jeans - a competition prize from teenage magazine, Just Seventeen. Unfortunately, they don't fit anymore, but I did manage to find a pair of stonewash jeans, with rips in that still fit, just. And to complete the outfit, I found my old Smash Hits t-shirt. I did two weeks work experience at the magazine's offices in 1988. It was great getting the tube into Carnaby Street. I felt very grown-up. The t-shirt was one of the gifts from my time there.

I'm currently reading the novel, Please look after mother, by Shin Kyong-Sook. The story centres on a Korean elderly lady who goes missing at a train station. It is a story about filial obedience, guilt, regret, loss, identity, family and memories. The story is gripping and haunting. A colleague's mother passed away last week and I've been feeling a sadness at the presence of loss and death.

So I felt quite emotional walking into Song Dong's exhibition, Waste Not, at the Curve, Barbican Centre. I read the story on the board but it was the enormity of the stuff that was in the room and the extent of it that made me well up. My parents too grew up in this generation of keeping things, hoarding and not wasting things. Perhaps that is where I get my hoarding instincts from. I could also identify with his sense of filial obedience, having been raised in a similar manner.

Each object had a story to tell, a sense of history and belonging, and yet in a way, each object was silent because the storyteller (his mother) was no longer around to tell their stories. I have been haunted with the sense of regret that each of the characters in the novel shows regarding their relationships with the lost mother. I think we would all like to have better relationships with our family, especially better communication. This evening's meal included a resolve to have our stories told and all our stories listened to.

True art has the power to transform lives.

(Wu jin qu yong - waste not, everything has a use)