Yang Fudong's 'Beyond GOD and Evil' Exhibition Explores Song Dynasty Through Nietzsche and Film Process

Key facts

• Yang Fudong's exhibition 'Beyond GOD and Evil' opened at Shanghart's West Bund outpost on 8 November, running through 24 January.
• The exhibition is part of his Museum Film Project, which began in March 2018 at Shanghai's Long Museum West Bund with 'Dawn Breaking'.
• The project involves filming live performances over a month depicting Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) ceremonial and artistic life.
• Thirty-six daily video diaries were created during the Shanghai filming, interspersed with quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche's works.
• The project travels to multiple exhibitions and countries, with the first post-Shanghai stop at Marian Goodman Gallery, London, through 26 July 2019.
• The exhibition title adapts Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil' (1886) to address the wider meaning of 'shàn' (good) in Chinese.
• Yang Fudong wants audiences to question whether the story or the filming process represents the 'true' thing, referencing 'Seeing is believing'.
• The Song Dynasty was chosen as a prosperous highpoint in Chinese culture, with traditional Chinese patterned wallpaper used to evoke the era.