Donglin Song is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in illustration and sculpture, currently based in Leeds.
Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses illustration, mixed media, and sculpture, focusing on the expression of subtle emotions and the exploration of human life.
That's Because
That's Because is an exhibition by Donglin Song considering how human emotion and desire are displaced, transferred, and projected beyond the human body. Through soft, touchable materials and restrained forms of interaction, the exhibition explores transgression not as excess or shock, but as a subtle crossing-where feeling slips from one body to another, from the human to the non-human.The works focus on moments in which intimacy emerges toward machines, objects, and material surfaces. These encounters do not aim to explain or categorise desire, but to acknowledge its movement: how affect attaches itself to what is usually considered inert, functional, or neutral. In this sense, transgression operates quietly, through proximity, pressure, and hesitation.
Rather than illustrating specific fetishes or identities, the exhibition offers a space for sensing what is difficult to name. Touch becomes a way of thinking, and softness a site where emotion, projection, and restraint coexist.
Ego-attachment
This was my undergraduate graduation project. I wanted to explore the presence of the body, the experience of physical pain, and the fundamental question of what it means to exist in the world-expressed in a gentle, subtle way.
Detachment
This work grew out of my undergraduate graduation project, which couldn’t be exhibited at the time due to censorship and the pandemic. Four years later, after joining Assembly House in Leeds, I finally had the opportunity to present a related piece in their group show.
This installation is a transparent inflatable human form, partially filled with water, absorbent resin, and small rusty nails that almost disappear into the floor. The tension between these materials speaks to a kind of pain that is difficult to name, and to a state of dissociation that hovers between presence and absence. Through this work, I continue exploring the presence of the body, the experience of physical pain, and what it means to exist in the world-expressed in a gentle and subtle way.