Song Dong was born in China in 1966 and currently lives and works in Beijing. He has been a significant figure in the development of Chinese conceptual art since the early 1990s. His practice incorporates performance, photography, projection, video and installation. Emerging from a strong Beijing–based avant-garde performance art community, Song Dong explores notions of perception and the ephemeral nature of existence. Like many of his contemporaries, his political and financial circumstances have encouraged a solitary, meditative way of working in which ideas are expressed through inexpensive materials and small-scale works, dubbed ‘apartment art’ by Chinese critics. In his photographic series and short video pieces, Song Dong uses sequenced images to explore a rapidly modernizing China and to capture notions of transience and illusion in contemporary society. Song Dong’s work has been shown extensively throughout Europe, Asia and North America including the Museum of Modern Art (2009), PS 1 in New York (2007), SFMOMA (2007), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2006), Sao Paolo Biennale (2004), Istanbul Biennale (2003), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2003), the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis(2003) and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2003).