Song Dong’s Waste Not— describes a generation of Chinese people who grew up during the Cultural Revolution with the experience of displacement, poverty and the constant shortage of goods.

Exhibited in the atrium of the MoMA in New York, the installation occupied a massive space, and stood as a monument of this period in Chinese history, a record of his mother’s life, as well as a tribute to his father’s death.

Exhibited in Vancouver Art Gallery through several rooms, the installation allows for a more intimate experiential connection and relation to the objects. The broken pieces, the familiar lables, and the sheer amount and weight of the objects that occupied the museum’s galleries.