3 Years: Arrow Factory

Contributions by Ou Ning, Beatrice Leanza, Dan S. Wang, Ken Lum, Li Jinghu, Patty Chang; plus Arrow Factory’s neighbors and local residents.

Arrow Factory is an independently run art space located in a narrow 200-year-old alleyway in the center of Beijing. Founded in 2008, Arrow Factory reclaimed an existing storefront and transformed it into a space for site-specific installations and projects by contemporary artists that are designed to be viewed from the street twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Arrow Factory has aimed at reaching a diverse public made up of neighboring residents, as well as local and international art audiences, and has been instrumental in encouraging new avenues for site-oriented artistic production in China. With this publication, audiences are able to view comprehensive documentation of some twenty-eight temporary site-specific works produced by Chinese and international artists at Arrow Factory over the past three years between April 2008 to March 2011. 3 Years: Arrow Factory provides a valuable look into the uniqueness of our contemporary situation, and captures for posterity the fleeting connections that situate Arrow Factory in China’s larger economic, intellectual, and artistic zeitgeist.

150 color ill.