Group Exhibition Shanghai Exhibition Center, Shanghai
The 10th edition of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai will return to the Shanghai Exhibition Center from May 8 to 11, 2025, bringing together over 100 participating partners from more than 20 cities worldwide for a visual celebration that spans art, culture, and the spirit of the times.
The year 2025 marks several key anniversaries: 130 years since the birth of global cinema, 120 years of Chinese film, and 60 years since the emergence of video art, a medium deeply influenced by the development of both photography and film. Coincidentally, it also marks the 10th anniversary of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai.
To commemorate this special year, this edition of the fair features a special exhibition in the entrance hall, showcasing four influential creators from diverse realms of moving image: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhangke, Liu Zheng, and Yu Lik-wai. Curated by renowned image curator and writer Shi Hantao, the anniversary exhibition titled “Like Water, Light and Shadow” brings together the distinctive visual languages of these four artists to create an artistic landscape where image and reality, memory and imagination, intertwine.
This is not only a curated collection of exhibitions but also a contemporary expression of Eastern narratives and individual perspectives, inviting viewers into the fluid perception of characters, spaces, and time as captured through each artist's lens.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s images at first appear to depict ordinary scenery. His narrative pacing is slow, even stifling—like the mundane flow of everyday life, frozen in a moment with no clear beginning or end. Yet within these silent frames lie traces of social or historical events, shadows of folklore and myth. From Chicago to Bangkok to Calarcá, Colombia, people live under different circumstances, yet face many similar social challenges. Through techniques like collage, juxtaposition, perforation of photographs, narrative disruption or reversal, and even photo inversion, Apichatpong leads the viewer to the hidden depths or reverse side of the image. In doing so, he prompts reflection on the shared destinies of diverse cultures foretold by modern history, and the inescapable experience of individuals trapped in the slow erosion of life by present-day realities.
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