IN REVIEW
SONG PARK:
KITTY WHITE IN THE LAYERED PLACE INTERSECT ARTS CENTER
Song Park’s mixed media tableau, Kitty White, was one of several standout artworks in the Layered Place exhibit at Intersect Arts Center this past spring. Aptly named for its studded replica casts of Hello Kitty, a global icon of
cutesy girldom, Park’s 30” x 40” artwork is formed from thick white plaster over board, its edges pillowed with satin fringe and pink and white faux fur. The work is an effective labyrinth to the entrapped remains of porcelain
and ceramic doll figurines. These occupants inhabit the layers of a place that is singularly and infinitely soft, pure and delicate. It is a place of thick, clinging femininity. Most of the dolls represent grown women while one pink-dressed little porcelain girl stands on top of the scene. She is affixed in her manufactured position beside a glossy pink number 8 (or perhaps it is an infinity symbol). The girl atop appears unbothered by the fate of the figures below her who are strung with strands of pearls that blind, suffocate and adorn. Broken bits of porcelain women secured in plaster peer out from the frosted surface. Park’s layered space successfully houses a postmodern critical reception of womanhood. She inserts herself into her work with a tag marked “FAUX.” Kitty White is a critical reception to a subjective experience of womanhood plastered in place, stuck in the hardened wall of learned cultural behavior. Park visually unravels and responds to the historical cultural practice of femmes performing purity and innocence. -Katryn Dierksen
www.intersectstl.org
Song Park, Kitty White (left), Kitty White detail (right), (photo credit: Katryn Dierksen) 09 ALLTHEARTSTL.COM SUMMER 2019
IN REVIEW