Body Prints and Principles, an ongoing open edition of banner public art installations. Each iteration of the print edition installation is a civic call and response on-site with text from the philosophers Patanjali and Parmenides. Each digital banner print is comprised of original mono-prints in tempera paint of the footfalls of the yoga poses in moon salutes, or incubation and meditation postures.

Above: proposal sketch for Union Square, NY, NY, Art in Odd Places Festival. As translated by Edwin Bryant (Rutgers), each banner print reads with one of the five principles for peace by the philosopher Patanjali. Each digital print banner has two sides. On one side is a set of Suran Song’s body prints made from the flow of the yoga postures in moon salutes, and on the other side is an axiom by the philosopher Patanjali for a peaceful life and society —non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, conservation, and non-greed.

Suran Song, 2023
Body Prints & Principles
Installation view at The Downtown Ann Arbor Public Library in the group show entitled, Awake! Printmaking in Action
Juried by A2AC Exhibitions Committee

Suran Song, 2023
Body Prints & Principles
Installation view at The Downtown Ann Arbor Public Library in the group show entitled, Awake! Printmaking in Action
Juried by A2AC Exhibitions Committee

Suran Song, 2023
Body Prints & Principles
Installation view at The Downtown Ann Arbor Public Library in the group show entitled, Awake! Printmaking in Action
Juried by A2AC Exhibitions Committee

Suran Song, 2023
Body Prints & Principles
Installation view at The Downtown Ann Arbor Public Library in the group show entitled, Awake! Printmaking in Action
Juried by A2AC Exhibitions Committee

Artist’s Statement for Awake! Printmaking in Action
I am so proud to have my next edition of Body Prints & Principles installed at the downtown Ann Arbor Public Library for The Ann Arbor Art Center’s exhibition, Awake! Printmaking in Action. The Ann Arbor Public Library was the first place my teacher’s teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar, introduced his very first yoga class in America, and the first Iyengar Yoga studio in the United States was opened by Mary Palmer in Ann Arbor in 1973.

The inspiration of Sanskrit and the civics of politics inform my artwork. Comprised of mono-prints of the footfalls of the yoga poses in moon salutes and principles for peace by the philosopher Patanjali, each banner has two sides. On one side is a set of my body prints made from the flow of the yoga postures in moon salutes, and on the other, an axiom for a peaceful life and society: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, conservation, and non-greed.

For Awake! Printmaking in Action at The Ann Arbor Public Library, I have chosen to print the edition of banners in a similar manner and scale to a favorite iteration of Body Prints & Principles that I made while proudly serving as an Artist in Residence at The Laundromat Project in Queens, NY.

On the one hand, I love creating installations in the context of commercial art galleries like Jack Tilton (in a show curated by Janine Antoni in the 1990’s) to a solo show at Site: Brooklyn in 2015, and in beautiful museums like The Villa Terrace Museum and The Katonah Museum of Art in 2021. On the other hand, I also love creating improvised installations through community organizing with local radio stations, pop-up art galleries, portable stages, very tiny music venues, very large pro-peace political demonstrations, and, my all-time favorite site, the laundromat.

Since 1998, I have made over 1,000 site-specific performances, installations, and exhibitions across the U.S. utilizing yoga as an art medium, video projections, post-punk music of my own composition and also covers, painting, print-making, sculpture, and performance art-based ready-mades. Below: installation view at JH Laundromat 8515 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, NY