Rae-Yen Song is a visual artist based in Glasgow
Instagram: @raeyensong
Context:
Over the last two years I’ve been thinking deeply about my relationship to art institutions, care, and the nurturing/sustaining of a more ethical practice. This was urged by Black Lives Matter, the pandemic, and the increasing costs and precarity of living/surviving as an artist. Texts by Teresa Cisneros like Document 0, and participating in several workshops hosted by her, have been the backbone to this way of critically thinking, imagining and actioning the ways I want to practice.
“‘how do I as a person of colour navigate a system that is not designed to include me?’ Or better yet ‘how do I break open these institutions that we pay for and that belong to all of us?’”
Document 0 is a sharp tool, one that has helped me carve out and share my own working document. It details how I would like to work with others/institutions to begin a healthy and honest relationship, as well as continuously asking questions to hold myself – and the people and institutions I work with – to account.
“What do you care for and about?”
“What are you doing about white supremacy?”
What I am Reading Now…
Rae-Yen Song, August 2022
This is the beginning of something new for me but I do hope with such transparency – and hopefully with more artists starting to do the same too – more meaningful care for artists, and therefore fuller working with institutions, will be fostered over time and become common practice.