Vulnerability

 Chen Zhen

Working with children from the favelas of Salvador, he used candles which in China symbolise the life of an individual and in Brazil are used in Candomblé religious ceremonies, to construct houses based on different local styles of architecture.

Art of Change: News Directions from China

Wild Things

"Max the king of all wild things was lonely

and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all."

Where the Wild Things Are

Say out loud your desire, get experienced and you'll get it,

while your enemies disappear. 

Higglety Pigglety Pop

Barbican

Maurice Sendak - Oliver Knussen

Cymbeline

Romans and Brits fight over power in full moon

in Shakespeare's tragicomic romance

Cymbeline

by Ninagawa Company

in Barbican

"the heartbeat of heaven that love is" 

but we have to pay our taxes

Sweet Dreams

let him sleep forever
Song Dong
Barbican

Waste Not

Chinese conceptualist artist Song Dong displayed her mother's collection of over 10000 objects in Barbican, London hoarded during five decades of social and political turmoil in Peking.
The collection of thousands of old, rubbish stuff helps to understand five decades of Chinese history  with a constant struggle for survival, but also explores the role everyday objects play in our memories.

isn't this familiar?

waste not

Fragments

Kurtág: Kafka Fragments
in Barbican

"None sings as purely as those in deepest hell;

it is their singing that we take for the singing of angels."