Y Contemporary Art Center is a newly established multifaceted contemporary art institution in Fuzhou, located on the 6th, 7th, and 8th floors of the 200-meter-high Yasheng Tower, with more than 3000 square meters of floor space. It is projected to open its doors to the public in 2027. Its programs encompass exhibitions, public events, and a research-centered artist-in-residency program.

Situated at the confluence of three rivers, whose courses symbolically trace the city’s somewhat semi-colonial past, the Y Contemporary Art Center positions itself as a site located at the intersection of history and the present. Flanked by sky gardens and outdoor spaces and structurally distinct from the rest of the tower, it occupies, vertically, an interstice in the all-glass-facaded commercial complex. Drawing on the unique locality and its history as one of the earliest port cities open to international contact and colonial trade, the Y Contemporary Art Center embraces (supports) art and research practices that bridge history with contemporary reality.

It focuses on art that advances conceptual exploration and intellectual engagement—work that interrogates cultural canons, challenges artistic nomenclature, addresses social conditions, operates cross-disciplinary, and, in short, embodies contemporary art practices that create oscillating spaces between the center and its peripheries. The institution also seeks to expand the scope of contemporary visual art by incorporating into its programs diverse forms of creative practices, such as performing arts, social practices, and creative writings that are traditionally outside the purview of contemporary visual art, while rendering visible knowledge production and creative processes that usually unfold behind closed doors.

The art center operates through a three-pronged approach: a coherently articulated exhibition program, a series of periodic events including workshops, lectures, symposia, and performances, and a residency program.

• The exhibition venue, situated on the 6th floor and covering 1000 square meters, hosts large thematic exhibitions, multiple concurrent exhibitions, or aggregated solo exhibitions that engage significant societal and cultural issues with contemporary resonance.

• The 7th floor features a multi-functional venue with a conference room, a café, a library, and two large outdoor venues (sky gardens), hosting a program of short-term activities such as workshops, art events, music performances, discussions, and lectures. Within the institution’s theoretical framework, this program emphasizes engagement with the local audience, cultivating community, and creating social space through socially engaged creative practices.

• Aligned with the ethos of the art center, the residency program encourages research-based, eclectic practices, while granting a new form of visibility to the otherwise hidden processes. The 8th floor consists of several shared studios of varied functions and disciplines, designed to promote cross-disciplinary experimentation. Conceived as visible sites—with transparent walls and semi-open to the public—they foster spontaneous social contact and dialogue, functioning as a public platform or an interface rather than traditional private spaces for art production.

Within these contexts, we imagine Y Contemporary Art Center itself as a cultural project—one that through eclectic contemporary practices, maps vanishing traces of the region’s long history of cultural encounter, early maritime trade, colonial entanglement, trajectories of emigration, its industrial and urban transformations, whose afterlives, sedimented in contemporary social and economic textures, continue to shape our present reality. Rather than cataloguing histories, it invites artists to use the site and its overlapping temporalities as a palimpsest through which to rethink contemporary art and its role in shaping new understandings of entangled social, cultural, and historical realities.

三度当代艺术中心（Y Contemporary Art Center）是在福州新成立的多元当代艺术机构，位于高200米的亚升大厦六、七、八层，总面积超过3000平方米。该机构预计将在2027年正式向公众开放。其内容包含展览、公共活动以及以研究为核心的艺术家驻留项目。

三度当代艺术中心坐落于三江交汇之处，这一河流流状象征性地勾连着城市半殖民历史的脉络，使其自我定位于历史与当下的交汇处。艺术中心由空中花园和户外空间环绕，其结构形式也与塔楼主体有所区别，垂直地嵌于这座全玻璃幕墙商业综合体的“缝隙”之中。借由这一独特的地缘位置，以及福州作为最早开放对外交流与殖民贸易的港口城市之一所承载的历史，亚升艺术中心致力于支持能够在历史与当代现实之间搭建桥梁的艺术与研究实践。

机构重点关注推动观念探索与思想参与的艺术实践——包括质疑文化权威、挑战艺术命名体系、关注社会现实、跨学科运作的艺术创作；简言之，即那些在“中心”与“边缘”之间创造动态空间的当代艺术实践。艺术中心也试图通过纳入更为多元的创作形式来扩展当代视觉艺术的范畴，例如表演艺术、社会实践及创意写作等传统上不被视为视觉艺术核心的领域，同时让通常在幕后发生的知识生产与创作过程得以显现。

艺术中心的运作基于三大核心板块：结构清晰的展览项目；定期举办的工作坊、讲座、研讨会与表演等公共活动；以及艺术家驻留项目。

• 六层的展览空间面积达1000平方米，将呈现大型专题展览、多展并行项目，或围绕重要社会与文化议题的系列性个展。

• 七层设有多功能空间，包括会议室、咖啡厅、图书室以及两个大型户外空间（空中花园），用于举办各类短期项目，如工作坊、艺术活动、电影放映、音乐演出、讨论及讲座等。在机构的理论框架中，此项目强调与本地观众的互动、社群营造，以及通过社会参与式的创作实践来构建公共性的社会空间。

• 与艺术中心的理念相契合，驻留项目鼓励以研究为基础的多元实践，并为通常不可见的创作过程提供新的可见性。八层由若干具有不同功能和学科属性的共享工作室构成，旨在促进跨学科实验。作为“可见的场域”——拥有透明墙面并以半开放形式向公众呈现——这些空间鼓励自发的社会接触与对话，更像是公共平台或界面，而非传统意义上封闭的艺术生产空间。

在这些语境中，我们将三度当代艺术中心本身视为一个文化项目——通过多元的当代实践，勾勒出该地区漫长的文化接触史、早期海上贸易、殖民纠葛、移民轨迹、工业与城市变迁的消逝痕迹，这些历史的余绪沉积在当代社会与经济结构中，并持续塑造我们的现实世界。艺术中心并非意在编目历史，而是邀请艺术家将此处及其多重时间性视作一种“重写的羊皮纸*”（palimpsest），以此重新思考当代艺术以及其在理解交错的社会、文化与历史关系中的作用。

*注：“palimpsest（重写的羊皮纸）”：这一场域并非单一时间的呈现，而是在不断覆盖与显影的历史痕迹之间，被持续书写与重构的意义现场