In 2020, we have been confronted with the most difficult pandemic in one hundred years, and sudden public crises and social upheavals have blanketed the globe. All of the known coordinates for the individual and the collective, life and nature, the present and eternity have led to a crossroads. Yan Shijie, curator of this exhibition, noted, “2020 has already become a ‘boundary stele’ for us, and tangible and intangible words have become frozen in eternal collective memories.” Through the unique ideas and actions of fifteen artists, “2020+ attempts to open a multi-dimensional space for understanding.

In Anri Sala’s If and Only If, a garden snail slowly crawls from one end of a viola bow to the other, disturbing the subtle balance of the musician’s performance. Because of its slow pace, the snail becomes the protagonist of that performance. Igor Stravinsky’s “Elegy for Solo Viola” is subverted in the tactile interaction between the musician and the garden snail, and the performance seems to take twice as long as it would ordinarily, extending the elegy into a painful and disorderly journey.

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