waste not

I had been meaning to go to an exhibition at the Barbican for the longest time now. I don't know if it's the trip to Barbican itself (as a Westie, travelling to the East is usually a mission I reserve only when absolutely necessary, like balayage-ing my hair at Radio salon) that hinders me, or the fact that I usually opt for the Tate or South Bank instead, but on this horribly miserable, rainy Saturday in May I thought it was time to take man up and take the trip to see Song Dong's exhibition entitled "Waste Not".

Being the ultimate anti-hoarder that I am (I tend to sweep everything and anything that I deem useless into the trash and strive to make my home as least cluttered as humanly possible), the idea that someone would spend their lifetime collecting...stuff, seems rather unfathomable. But this installation, which gathers 10,000 everyday objects that Song's mother cultivated over a period of five decades, is strangely affecting and very sentimental.

And whilst I'd probably suffer from a stress induced fit if I lived in this overly jammed household, I felt like I could relate to Song's narrative (or, more to be more precise, his mother's narrative) because of my own ties to a Soviet past. Hazy memories of my grandmother similarly "hoarding" items the average Westerner would deem unusable re-emerge in my mind.  This exhibition put together a very vivid family portrait but it also brought back an abundance of personal memories and a deeper understanding of those who feel the need to compulsively collect.