The Power of Stuff: Song Dong at MoMA.

Objects of a lifetime, all carefully arranged in MoMA’s mezzanine. Waste Not by Song Dong. (All photos by C-M.)

Last year, after my father died, my mother, my sister and I were faced with that mind-numbing post-death ritual of cleaning up. The house was littered with his things. Some items were eminently disposable: crumpled Kleenex, old magazines, empty bottles of pills. Others, clearly keepsakes. There was his wedding band, the mother-of-pearl crucifix he’d toted around for decades, the self-portrait with showgirl. And, of course, there were all the pieces in between – puzzling little bits that seemed like they could be valuable because they had at one point been important to my father: scribbled notes and rusty knick knacks from places we could hardly recall.

Of course, the bulk of his things were of no use to us. There were old engineering texts and boxes with slide rules and typewriter ribbons for typewriters we hadn’t had in decades. There was no doubt we’d get rid them. Despite their uselessness, these things nonetheless held a charge, a memory of my father – one that made them just a little bit difficult to throw away. I felt the same charge at Song Dong’s incredibly moving exhibit, Waste Not, at NYC’s MoMA. A sprawling installation of the entire contents of his mother’s house, it is a record – in stuff – of his mother’s life and, more significantly, his father’s death. Each object, however trivial, set aside, put away, secured – because, at one moment in time, it had been important.

The show is up through September 7. Do not miss.

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Visitors wound their way through rows of the artist’s mom’s stuff.

All the kitchenware, including a green tea set.

Neatly-folded plastic bags.

Books, magazine, umbrellas, ephemera.

A table full of medications.

Styrofoam.

Bottle caps.

Bottles.

Proving that no exhibit, however moving, can prevent banal thoughts. When I saw these, all I could think was, ‘I really could use a set of nighttables.’