This exhibition, currently on at The Barbican in London, is moving as well as fascinating. Most of us live in a throw-away society but it isn’t always the case and the installlation, comprising over 10,000 carefully laid out household possessions, is a tribute to the artist’s mother Zhao Xiangyuan who saved everything over 50 years, towards the end as a response to the loss of her husband.
Living through very difficult times the family never threw anything out as it might come in useful. Soap, wire, string, rags are all there as are plastic bottles, old chairs, soil-filled flower pots and even empty tubes of toothpaste.
Apart from being an extreme demonstration of frugality, it’s also a social document of design.
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