Ashley Song Artist Statement

  Ashley Song has been doing works using a variety of artistic mediums including visual works of pastel, ink, graphite and physical practices of dance performances. Recently she has been exploring and creating works involving media, videography, and editing. 

Title: Flowers of Identity
(Medium: Polymer Clay & Acrylic)

 In her visual works, the images often use great contrast with the accent of a complementary color such as red&green, to bring focus to the subject. Similarly, in her videography and editing works, she strays away from collage and destructive editing, instead put the emphasis on the raw movement and contrast the subject to its environment. For Ashley, the creative conceptualizing process and the planning of a piece of artwork have the same level of importance as the presentation. Her works go through a long process of revision and imagination before they are up for execution. Ashley's experience as a dancer also greatly influences her movements as a videographer. She draws from her experience as a dance team member to work with the actions of the subject, moving along to complement the flow of the imagery. When shooting videography, she precisely follows the studied choreography and makes bold moves with improvising visual cues. 

She evokes basic emotions through her work, and it is to be experienced as a raw form of expression. Her country of origin, China and the Chinese culture has a massive influence on the philosophy of artwork. Combining with many other Asian cultures as inspirations, her work incorporates the discussion of duality and the yin and yang of life. After moving to Canada as a student in her early teenage years, the experience drove her to be inspired and express herself in the visual languages of color, slowly, delivering a message to the audience without text became part of her style. The cultural implications of these colors used in her work also play an essential role in delivering the message. Such as the contrast between the western and Asian interpretations of the colors white and red. Her recent topic of interest is the Anthropocene and modern human archaeology which focus on the study of garbage. She has explored environmental issues with her ink works in the past. After studying and researching more about the Anthropocene, she is currently working on a new project once again using ink as the primary medium.

Title: An Insight (Medium: Digital)

  Artist Biography: Ashley Song usually works with pastel, ink, graphite, video editing and videography. She explores themes such as transformation, the Anthropocene, and cultural assimilation. Currently an undergraduate Cinema Studies student at SFU living in Vancouver Canada. She is also a member of Panwiberry Dance Team, often doing public performances on the streets downtown of the city.