Apocalypse of Yesterday

Curator:  Pu Yingwei   

Artists：Chen Weimin、Li Xindi、Liu Guangli、Lu Qing、Sophie JingWei Zhang、Wang Guofeng、Xiong Haoqi、Zeng Hong

Apocalypse of Yesterday: When Historical Nihilism Has Become Real

“From the perspective of the progress of civilization, it is all related to ideology”.

The war has changed everything, or the war allows us to realize all the realities that never changed. The proponent of Eurasianism, Russian political analyst and strategist Aleksandr Dugin, proposed: “We are dealing with civilizational and geopolitical processes in which the economy and energy are only tools. A unipolar world, a global liberal ideology, and Western hegemony is crumbling, and they are willing to do anything—even start a third World War—to stop that from happening.” Russia, on the other hand, declared that it was a “just de-Nazification war”. Putin also emphasized in his speech: “The real strength lies in justice and truth, and justice and truth are on our side.” (1) Looking back at 2016, with the US election and Brexit, “post-truth”became the word of the year in Oxford Dictionary. After the severe test of the global epidemic, the framework of the nation-state and the division of ideologies were strengthened, with legitimate rhetoric to each other's advantage being continuously generated in the media. In this war at this moment, in addition to the spontaneous live broadcast of the war on mobile phones by those who witnessed the war, various official media are also deploying their own propaganda weapons on a large scale on platforms such as Douyin and Twitter. (2) The people, in the propaganda of different camps, are acting as the power requires. Lies go their own way, and truths drift apart. This is the exact realism that we are facing today.

With its natural critical and speculative spirit, art is also involved in the generation of politics and civilization, and surplus value beyond these fields is hidden at the same time; history also serves this ahistorical potentiality. (3) On this basis, the exhibition title “Apocalypse of Yesterday” proposes a non-linear time paradox based on how we will face and interpret yesterday when historical nihilism has become real? How to interpret today and get involved? How to hope for tomorrow and build it? These three often presuppose each other and generate each other.

It brings together eight artists of different generations from the 1950s to the 1990s. They are experiencing and practicing “how art creation is relevant to this problem-ridden world” in respective ways. This correlation is a contemplation for reality, meanwhile providing it with a critical and speculative weapon. It allows us to believe a more determined, open, free, and peaceful world is yet to come.  (Text: Pu Yingwei)

Index

Address by President Putin on February 24,2022, “It is necessary to explain again why we have to do this”, 2022

Lord Auch II, “2022: First year of planetary war”, published in LeFront, 2022

“An Ode to Unfreedom - Survival and Art After the Epidemic”, published in Twenty-First Century, Pu Yingwei, 2022