Rae-Yen Song: in conversation with JJ Chan

In this public event hosted by Edinburgh College of Art, artists Rae Yen Song and JJ Chan were in conversation to discuss their artistic practices, and the matters, concerns, and tactics they intend to take with them into the 2020s. Taking Rae Yen Song's most recent artworks as a starting point for discussion to they went on to consider the role that artists can take to create opportunities for publics to engage with creative and critical thinking. They were joined in conversation by recent graduate, Leah Harscoët. From each of their respective experiences and stages as artists and graduates, this conversation touched and poked upon subjects including the sustainability of art practice, artists self-organising, friendship and the institution-in-progress. Rae-Yen Song‘s artwork explores the position of Other within our tangled reality, and speaks broadly and politically about foreignness, identity, survival and what it means to belong - or not. It draws first and foremost on personal and familial experiences, then uses fantasy and fabulation to fill in the gaps - inflating and embellishing these narrative source materials, elevating them to the level of parable, visualising them, and finally plotting them as points and histories in an alternate dimension, saturated with affect, absurdity and incongruity. This event coincided with the ECA Graduate Show 2021.