The 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress — Art in an Age of Historical Ambivalence

Yang Fudong
Indeed, the Only Way
Installation, live performance and video

For many years, Yang Fudong has been continuously developing and experimenting with his Museum Film project. For the Biennale, he transformed a huge staircase space of the museum into a symbolic situation. During the opening, the artist organized a performance by up to 500 people, which he filmed and turned into a video on display during the exhibition. Visitors can feel free to wander around the empty space. The title of the work implies thinkings and discussions on the historical development, social change, and personal life. The “stage” scene consisting of a vast red carpet, a mirror surface, and a silver wallpaper, along with the collective performance of descending the staircase, all indicate the flow of certain forces and the social landscape and cultural inertia brought by them. Yang’s filming of the performance and the video on display, in turn, stripped and reshaped all this scene from the space and time into a suspension, forming a confrontation with the empty space that allows the audience to shape themselves.

© Shanghai Power Station of Art

Yang Fudong”Indeed, the Only Way” Rehearsal installation view