THE FUSE

In 2009, an art installation called Waste Not traveled from Beijing to New York, London, Vancouver, and Sydney. It consisted of ordinary household objects, bottle caps, toothpaste tubes, shoes, and kitchen utensils, all saved over decades by Zhao Xiangyuan, the mother of artist Song Dong. Her son had worried for years that her overstuffed Beijing house was harming her health. Rather than purging her possessions, he sat with her and sorted every item, laying them out in rows grouped by size, color, and use. Not one thing was thrown away. In doing this, something remarkable happened. What had looked like a hoard became a collection, at least in the eyes of museum visitors.