The Skinny Showcase revival: Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊
Ahead of an epic solo exhibition at Glasgow's Tramway, we look back at the evolving creative practice of Rae-Yen Song, who has kept us at the edge of our seat since 2018
We’ve been captivated by Rae-Yen Song’s practice ever since Edinburgh Art Festival's Platform in 2018. Guided by Daoism, the artist explores diasporic-futurism, self-mythologising, science fact/fiction and belonging. In Platform, a group exhibition for emerging artists, Song handmade a lion costume to draw parallels between the Scottish coat of arms and lion dancing in Chinese culture. In an interview with us at the time, Song told us such symbols are rooted in “language that I can occupy positively, rather than have this emptiness between the two cultures, where I don’t fit in.”
Rae-Yen Song. Image courtesy of the artist.
Ever since, we’ve eagerly observed Song’s ideas blossom and alternate between sculpture, drawing, text, video, performance and beyond. By 2021, Song participated in Glasgow International, showcasing a wiggly-armed sculpture with five heads alongside works by Rabiya Choudhry, Jasleen Kaur and Raisa Kabir. It wasn’t long until Song secured a debut solo exhibition, titled ▷▥◉▻. Held at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Song invited us into a tent-like creature, epic in scale, with inflated limbs and decorated with microbe-like patterns. As with many of Song’s works, there were nods to family stories and histories throughout.
Rae-Yen Song, song dynasty ○○○. Photo by Luke Pickering.
Our most recent homage to Song emerged in 2024 alongside the exhibition life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot, at CCA Glasgow. It was here that Song united over 20 artists and thinkers in an “ecosystem of ideas” informed by feminist and decolonial practices. Song’s installation, ○ squigoda song cycle ● water~land~air ○, incorporated a fermenting pool of tea fungus connected to microphones, a hydrophone and other sensors. life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot was Song’s testing ground, stewing ideas for an upcoming solo exhibition at Tramway. In the artist’s most ambitious presentation to date, Song will transform the old tram depot into a sub-aquatic world shaped by ancestral knowledge, memory and imagination. At the exhibition’s heart, Song transforms the ancestral figure of tua mak (大眼, translating “big eyes” in the Teochew dialect), who drowned at sea in Singapore at thirteen years old. The figure, who is only known through Song’s familial memories and myths, is transformed into a lifeform who is ever-evolving and in perpetual migration.
Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊, Tramway, Glasgow, 15 Nov until 24 Aug 2026, Wed-Sun, 11am-5pm