Rae-Yen Song: *May-May Songuu* at CFCCA

Rae-Yen Song: *May-May Songuu* at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, Until 12 April 2020, free entry - Visit now

*May-May Songuu* is an exhibition by Rae-Yen Song at CFCCA which explores the construction of personal identity through relationships – familial, communal and divine – which revolve around appetite, and the sharing and offering of food.

Consisting of costumes, sculptural objects, growing specimens, animation and large-scale drawings, the exhibition will tell a mythical story about the origins of appetite, seen through the prism of sisterly love. It will be complemented by a series of workshops with Manchester’s Chinese communities in which new work will be generated in response to the installation. Prompting community gathering, conversation and making, the workshops will culminate in a closing event and shared meal.

Rae-Yen Song explores self-mythologising as a survival tactic, using fantasy and fabulation to create a personal cultural language informed by autobiography, family stories, relationships and shared memories. Rae-Yen adopts this language as a tool for self-definition and identification, using it to form narratives that speak broadly and politically about race, gender, culture, identity and what it means to belong – or not.