As a third-generation American, I confess that I rarely think about my birthright of freedom. Lady Liberty, often mass produced as kitsch souvenirs for tourists, has become a ubiquitous logo for New York like that of the Eiffel Tower for Paris. Illuminating the glass-enclosed Prow Art Space of Manhattan’s Flatiron Building, Xin Song’s monumental site-specific installation, Cutting Dreams, challenges me and over 500,000 passers-by weekly to enter a meditation and dialogue on the promise, complexities and changing perceptions of the country’s most treasured value. Curated by Cheryl McGinnis in partnership with Sprint, the exhibit is on view 24 hours a day from November 2012 through January 2013, and viewers are invited inside the Prow to speak with the artist as she adds to this ongoing project on Tuesdays, from 11am to 3pm.

Having grown up in Zhongguanchun, the birthplace of China’s high-tech “Silicon Valley,” Xin Song did not come to the United States seeking freedom from oppression like the generation of Chinese artists who fled from Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Although educated at Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts, she was profoundly affected by the ancient folk tradition of Chinese papercut while visiting rural villages at the age of 18. Vastly different from her urban background, she learned from farming artists of all generations sharing techniques and talking about life. Transplanted to Brooklyn in 2000, her passion for conversing with community and place led Song to transform this ancient tradition into a living cross-cultural contemporary fine art that celebrates New York’s rich tapestry of cultures.

Rising like a beacon from a flowing papercut river, Song’s large-scale densely layered Statue of Liberty comes “home” to face Madison Square Park, where the head and torch-bearing arm were displayed from 1876 to 1882 before Frédéric Bartholdi completed the design for his iconic neoclassical sculpture. Cutting Dreams shifts from two-dimensional paper into cutting space itself, using both natural and artificial light to create ever-changing shadow play and movement. “Made in America” by Song, multiple 11-inch high red replicas, hand-cut from industrial foam board, watch omnipresent from the river and all parts of a constructed bridge that connects cultures as well as people, boroughs, cities, states, countries and continents. As she documents the moment with a black and white montage of everyday life, Song chronicles the current climate of uncertainty with photographs of various neighborhoods layered with current events such as war, Occupy Wall Street protests, and “Stop and Frisk” policies. Referencing each other daily, American and Chinese newspaper clippings are collaged respectively to each of the two walkways of the bridge, and elements of red throughout the installation echo the historic and continuing sacrifices for freedom sometimes forgotten as we inhabit our day-to-day routines.
Cutting Dreams’ weighty issues are visually expressed by more compressed layers than her lyrical work such as Tree
of Life, which was inspired by the process of numerous cultures establishing new roots, blossoming, and intertwining in a new home. Laminated between glass and permanently installed at Brooklyn’s landmark Bay Parkway D train station through the MTA’s Arts for Transit program, her colorful filigree of flora and birds on the platform side exalts the spirit of the community with cut photographs of people, shops, restaurants, and residential buildings; the street view, cut from black paper, honors the area’s historic ironwork. Interviewed by NYC-Arts co-host Paula Zahn for the 2012 PBS documentary “Treasures of New York: Art Underground,” Song’s work is already part of New York architecture and daily life for commuters. She was also featured as one of 12 distinguished Chinese-American artists in “Routes,” a 2012 traveling documentary and exhibition, which previewed this summer at the Asia Society. In addition to numerous public and private collections, her papercuts are included in art historian Patricia Karetzky’s book, Femininity in Contemporary Asian Women Artist Works from China, Korea and USA: If the Shoe Fits, and in Richard Vine’s 2011 revised and expanded edition of New China: New Art.
Devoted to encouraging critical thinking and interaction between artist and viewer through educational outreach and her gallery in TriBeCa, Cheryl McGinnis shares Song’s passion for making art accessible to the community. McGinnis, who spent her childhood in Peekskill, is among fourteen notable curators of Peekskill Project V through the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. The exhibition’s theme of The New Hudson River School reflects the resurgence of a once declining town with site-specific installations by various artists. On view from September 2012 through July 2013, Xin Song’s 36 Fish, cut from photographs of the neighborhood, fly against clouds and changing weather on the octagonal glass roof of the gazebo in the center of town, while her Ocean Fantasy converts a local church school’s windows into a glass bottom boat revealing intricate waves of fish and coral patterns.u
For more information visit www.cherylmcginnisgallery.com and join in the conversation via Facebook and Twitter.

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