The "Three Years" Exhibition © Apathy Contemporary.
Artist: BEING
Organized by: Apathy Contemporary
Curator：Review Art Museum
Supervisor：BEING’s Studio
Duration: 2023.09.28 - 2024.03.26
Venu: FuXing Road, Panyu District, Guangzhou, China.
At 2:00 a.m. on January 23, 2020, the city of Wuhan suspended all public transportation services—including city buses, ferries, long-distance coaches, subways, and train stations—and officially declared a lockdown.
On November 30, 2022, the city of Guangzhou officially announced the end of its COVID-19 outbreak. Temporary lockdown measures were lifted in several districts, including Liwan, Baiyun, Panyu, and Tianhe. Guangzhou became the first city in China to implement a comprehensive reopening, marking the initial step in the country’s broader exit from strict pandemic controls.
On December 4, 2022, mandatory PCR testing requirements were lifted, signaling the end of an era.
On January 13, 2023, artist BEING proposed the exhibition concept for The “Three Years” Exhibition.
Following the CHANGES exhibition, we recognized the need for a dedicated institution focused on contemporary art exhibitions.
As a result, Apathy Contemporary was officially founded on May 7, 2023.
On September 28, 2023, Apathy Contemporary opened The “Three Years” Exhibition to the public.
The "Three Years" Exhibition © Apathy Contemporary
The duration of China’s COVID-19 epidemic control period totaled 1,046 days.
There is a traditional Chinese adage: “Things do not occur more than three times.”
Having endured three protracted years of pandemic life — marked by isolation, vigilance, and uncertainty — we now stand at the threshold of renewal.This moment calls for more than mere transition; it asks us to metabolize collective memory, to process the ambiguities of recent history. Through the creation of scenes both familiar and estranged, we invite a reconsideration of the past not as closure, but as passage — a space to reflect, to bid farewell, and to set forth anew.In this exhibition, art becomes a medium of reckoning: with time, with memory, and with the unresolved tension between stasis and movement. It is an invitation to reimagine presence — not as a return, but as a departure. （BEING 2023.01.23）
Over the course of the pandemic, individuals across societies became both observers and participants in a shared historical moment.
Despite this, acts of selective perception and constrained expression became commonplace:
Eyes remained open, yet realities went unacknowledged; mouths moved, yet speech was silenced.
This exhibition resists the erasure of that experience.
It seeks to challenge the normalization of forgetting, and to confront the absurdity of collective silence in the face of lived history.
(Ted, the founder of Apathy Contemporary, 2023.01.28)
The "Three Years" Exhibition © Apathy Contemporary
Installation view © Apathy Contemporary
The global pandemic that swept across the world over the past three years changed every aspect of our lives. And yet, as the virus faded from view, so too did the conversations surrounding it. Life resumed in haste—as if nothing had ever happened.
