The MAO Museum of Oriental Art in Turin presents, from October 23, 2026, to June 27, 2027, “Song Dong. *Soul Out* is the first solo exhibition in Italy dedicated to Song Dong (Beijing, 1966), curated by Li Zhenhua and Davide Quadrio, with Francesca Filisetti and Rebecca Ricci. This site-specific project encompasses the entire museum and creates a dialogue between the works, the permanent collections, and the historic architecture of Palazzo Mazzonis.
The exhibition brings together some of the artist’s most iconic installations, as well as an archive of photographs and performance videos spanning from the 1990s to the present. Over thirty years of artistic exploration are reinterpreted through the relationship between individual experience and collective history, private memory and social transformations, with a focus on contemporary China.
Song Dong’s work is rooted in the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi, from whom he reinterprets the fluidity of existence and non-action through an intuitive approach influenced by Zen thought. His artistic language also engages with Arte Povera, Mono-Ha, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art. While connected to Taoist and Buddhist thought, the artist develops a poetic language built on minimal gestures, repetitions, and transformations of ordinary materials, used to reflect on time, impermanence, and the fragility of human experience. Visitors are greeted by *Believe*, a light installation adapted to the museum’s spaces. A cascade of red light introduces visitors to the immersive and sensory dimension of the project. The play on words regarding the meaning of “trust” generates a network of mutual distrust in one’s relationship with others and with oneself.
The centerpiece is*Waste Not*, a monumental installation presented for the first time in Italy following exhibitions at the Barbican Centre in London, the MoMA in New York, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Inspired by the appropriation practices of Dadaism and Duchamp’s ready-mades, it comprises the material possessions accumulated by the artist’s mother, Zhao Xiangyuan, including the wooden structure of her home. After her husband’s death in 2002, her passion for collecting turned into an obsession.
Over 10,000 everyday objects make up the work: buttons, containers, fabric scraps, chairs, tables, used clothing, abandoned toys, old magazines, telephones, empty toothpaste tubes, bottle caps, food containers, bars of soap, grocery bags, and stacks of medicine boxes. The domestic collection becomes a reflection on memory and accumulation, as well as on contemporary patterns of production and consumption. The theme of family relationships also emerges in *Touching My Father* and *My Daughter is my Four Seasons*, dedicated respectively to the father and daughter and to the emotional dynamics and forms of interaction within the family.
The Salone Mazzonis hosts* Borrow Light*, a participatory installation presented at the São Paulo Biennial in 2025. The work stems from the hundreds of lamps lent by citizens in response to the MAO’s call for contributions, launched in May 2026. Drawing inspiration from funhouse mirrors at amusement parks and Chinese feng shui, it arranges lights, mirrors, and reflections within a perceptual space that evokes the ephemeral and relational nature of existence. The lamps are elements of the work and material traces of the personal stories they carry. The work encapsulates the artist’s aesthetic and his relationship with the museum community.
For the first time in Italy, “Eating the City” will also be presented—a participatory performance and installation in which urban landscapes made of sweets and cookies are gradually consumed by the public. The collective destruction of the work reflects on the processes of growth, transformation, and consumption in metropolises, presenting the city as a fragile and transitory organism, embedded in a continuous cycle of construction, consumption, and dissolution. The program includes “Evolving Soundscapes,” a music and performance series curated by Chiara Lee and Freddie Murphy, as well as lectures, screenings, educational activities, and workshops. A bilingual catalog—in Italian and English—will be published, featuring new texts and essays by the curatorial team and invited scholars, an image section, and in-depth analyses of the works.
With *Song Dong. Soul Out*, the MAO continues its exploration of possible reinterpretations of its permanent collections through engagement with contemporary art. Following the solo exhibition dedicated to Chiharu Shiota, the museum once again engages in a dialogue with the core of its Chinese funerary collection, which consists largely of objects of symbolic and ritual significance. The audiovisual content will also be available in Italian Sign Language (LIS), as part of the MAO’s commitment to accessibility and inclusivity. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Tokyo Gallery+BTAP and Beijing Commune.
“The MAO’s exhibition design,” says Director Davide Quadrio, “emerges as a long-term process, grounded in relational networks and institutional negotiations, and capable of conceiving the museum as a multifaceted organism in which everything moves toward the One—that is, toward the existence of a museum of meaning: human, social, cultural, and political. From this perspective, the exhibition unfolds as an expanded portrait of the artist; his works are distributed throughout the museum’s spaces as presences in constant dialogue with the permanent collections, helping to define the MAO as a living organism, in continuous transformation and relationship with the public.”
Admission: Full price €18; Reduced price €15
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| Song Dong at the MAO in Turin: The installation “Waste Not” makes its Italian debut |
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