About the edition
A glimpse of an alternate dimension, shaped according to the ancestral logics and imagined futures of Song’s family. Artworks are covered in symbolic details, patterns, coded pictorial language and untranslatable knowledge that hint at the multiplicitous stories which collectively form this surreal space. There are worlds within worlds here, bodies within bodies, faces within faces. Excerpt from exhibition introduction by Eoin Dara, Head of Exhibitions
Rae-Yen Song created three print editions in tandem with the development of the exhibition ▷▥◉▻ at DCA. A fluid, creative dialogue throughout the production of this body of work enabled sculptural elements for the exhibition to become integrated into experimental processes in DCA Print Studio and, inversely, layers from the print development such as deep-etched copper plates, or intricately cut inky woodblocks, to ultimately merge into the gallery environment. The resulting three editions are closely interconnected but diverse.
ah kong --ghost-- is one of a small edition of just five multi-layered, circular imprints made from a sculptural object, the woodblock print matrix, that sits at the centre of Song’s gallery installation. This wooden motif is itself the artist’s reimagining of an artefact, a coin, which remained after Song’s grandfather’s cremation:
The only physical remnant of a life, long lost - that of my grandfather...an enduring, pocketed object; previously touched and felt - privately - in a distant land and another time, by him and countless others before. I never met my grandfather…The print is at a distant remove from that life but is nonetheless a descendent of sorts. It is a ghost, an ancestral whisper.
Each print is an impression, each slightly different, already fading. The sculptural object from which the print is taken is absent here, but it stands elsewhere, itself incorporated into a sculptural sphere which is both speculative and sacred. History, memory and imagination are layered to form a space which serves simultaneously as spectacle, memorial and refuge. That space is live, of my own making, and ephemeral; ah kong --ghost-- is an imprint of it, a contemporary memory, durable but fugitive. Rae-Yen Song
| Year | 2022 |
| Edition of | 5 |
| Media | Laser-cut woodblock print with screen-printing and additions of embossing powders and holographic vinyl on Somerset Velvet White 400gsm paper |
| Dimensions | 99 x 101.4cm (image size 90 x 90cm) |
| Signature | Signed, numbered and dated by artist on lower recto |
About Rae-Yen Song
Rae-Yen Song (b. 1993, Edinburgh) is an artist living and working in Glasgow. Song studied at Glasgow School of Art, and works across sculpture, drawing, installation, video, sound, costume, family collaboration and performative actions in public.
Selected projects include: a LUX Scotland moving image commission for BBC Scotland (2021); Dislocations, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow (2021); Fabric of Society (Glasgow International, 2021); songdynasty.life (Edinburgh Art Festival, 2020); ✵may-may songuu✵, CFCCA, Manchester, 2020; Survey, Jerwood Space, London, 2018; Platform, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, 2018; Human Rights Arts Festival, JDA Perera Gallery, Colombo (2017). Recent residencies include with Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2019-21); Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2019); Sura Madura, Sri Lanka (2017).
Song is also the co-founder of the collaborative projects YAKA Collective and Jarsdell Solutions Ltd.Own Art
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