Curatorial · 2025
Three Days: Wang Peng王蓬：三天
Revisiting Wang Peng’s 1995 social-ethnographic project in a corner pavilion of the Forbidden City, thirty years on – with a panel that completed the work as the reunion he had planned in 1995.
The north-west corner pavilion of the Forbidden City, 1995. Photo: Wang Peng 王蓬
Three Days revisits an exercise in social ethnography that Wang Peng completed exactly thirty years earlier, in 1995.
Carried out in two parts, the project began in the spring of 1995, when Wang Peng recorded with a camera the condition of a pavilion on the north-west corner of the Forbidden City/Palace Museum. Up to the end of 1994, the pavilion had been inhabited by local Beijing residents, part of a community living along the Hucheng Moat that surrounds the Forbidden City in temporary “non-regulation” structures. The pavilion, as an enclosed space, had made for sizeable living quarters, home to several families. In 1994 it was decided to clean up the moat area as part of the larger plan to restore the Forbidden City.
In March 1995, Wang Peng successfully applied to spend three days “observing the full moon” from the pavilion ahead of the planned restoration, and used the opportunity to document the pavilion and the ghostly traces of human habitation that remained. Restoration was completed in time for National Day. Between 20 and 22 October, Wang Peng returned to the pavilion for another three days to experience and examine the renovated structure, inviting friends to join him and share their impressions of the speed and nature of change unfolding across the city – at a time when Beijing’s ambition to host the Olympic Games was driving a period of hyper-rapid (re)development.
— adapted from the text by curator Karen Smith
Invited by Karen Smith, I worked closely with Wang Peng on revisiting the project – thirty years to complete it: joining the conversations, proofreading, translating, putting up the pictures, hosting the panel, and borrowing the chairs.
Panel: Three Days · Before · After 三天·之前·之后
22 October 2025, 2–4pm, Star Gallery, Beijing
In 1995 Wang Peng had already planned a reunion thirty years later as part of the work. The panel completed Three Days by holding that gathering.
Speakers: Wang Peng (artist); Karen Smith (curator, Head of Academic Programmes, De Ying Foundation); Lin Ye 林叶 (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Peking University); Song Dong 宋冬 (artist) Moderator: Nie Xiaoyi
Team — Artist: Wang Peng. Curator: Karen Smith. Space: Star Gallery. Moderator: Nie Xiaoyi. Translation: Wang Yuan, Nie Xiaoyi. Design: Zhou Fangtong, He Hao. Exhibition coordination: Wang Yuan, Zhang Xiaotian. Video: Li Guang. Printing: Shi Jing.