SONG Yongping (???) (Born 1961)

Song Yongping was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, and graduated from Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1983. He is currently lecturing in National Institute of Film and Broadcasting. Trained as a painter, Song Yongping is an artist that works with a variety of mediums including photography, painting and performance.

Song Yongping emerged in the 1990s as a member of the artist group that created the style of “New Pictures of the Floating World” (Xin fushihui), the name stemming from the ancient Japanese genre ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world), which can also mean “pictures of the sad world”. Concerned with the impact of economic reformation on the society, Song Yongping tries to show his understanding and reflection on the living attitude through his satirical paintings. From 1998 to 2000, Song Yongping engaged in a series of photography works titled My Parents. Filled with humane sensibility, these photos faithfully recorded his bedridden parents’ daily life in a dilapidated apartment. Over the course of the series the artist's parents crumple through disease and grief, with the artist often appearing in the same poses, garments, and even medical apparatus, standing as empathic witness to their loss and his own. This photography series attracted wide international attention and was recently acquired by the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.

Credit:

http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/general/pressdocs/Collections_Release_05.doc