Stories from the margins are here

Lives that never became the "protagonist" There is another exhibition on the 3rd floor of the Power Station of Art (PSA) that made me linger for a long time—"Collecting from the Margins." The name was intriguing from the start. We are accustomed to recording important events, key figures, and clear outcomes, but what truly occupies most of our daily life is often exactly what doesn't make it into the grand narrative: a moment of hesitation, a period of waiting, a house slowly aging, repetitive labor, or a fragment of an ordinary person's life. "Collecting from the Margins" focuses precisely on these things. It is an exhibition from the Power Station of Art (PSA) and the Chanel Culture Fund's 4th season of "New Cultural Producers," titled "Text and Art." The curation unfolds along two paths: news reporting and fictional literature. Upon entering, visitors even encounter a clear fork: turn left for "News," turn right for "Fiction." But once inside, the two paths constantly interweave. Behind the exhibition lies a very interesting concept—the "Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" proposed by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Unlike the linear narrative of traditional stories where heroes set off with weapons, defeat enemies, and reach the finish line, the "bag" is more like a collection: gathering small, disordered, and even inconclusive things first. The circular structure of the exhibition hall thus resembles a giant container, scattered with over 30 works/groups of works from fields like art, architecture, and literature. I especially like this way of observing the world. We often photograph a building at the moment it is completed, when it is most complete and beautiful, but we rarely pay attention to who cleans, maintains, and uses it every day, how it gradually ages, and what traces of life it leaves behind. Some works in the exhibition bring building maintenance back into focus: a house is not only composed of floor slabs and walls, but is also sustained by countless acts of sweeping, scrubbing, repairing, watering, and replacing pipes. Other works focus on infrastructure, ordinary residences, cleaners, immigrants, and those people and spaces that are easily overlooked in urban change. After seeing it, I feel that "margins" don't necessarily mean distant. Often, the so-called margins are right beside us, but because they are too ordinary, we no longer look at them. What art does here is not to suddenly make the ordinary great, but simply to shift our gaze slightly—from the center to the side, from the result to the process, from grand stories to those nameless people and things. When we start to seriously collect these small things, daily life itself slowly reveals its weight. This is probably what touched me about this exhibition. 💡 Tips: Exhibition dates: July 16 – Oct 8, 2026 (Free) Location: 3rd Floor, Power Station of Art (PSA) (No. 678 Miaojiang Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai) Transport: 🚇 Metro Line 4/8, get off at Xizang South Road Station, Exit 2, and walk for about 15 mins