On November 15, 2015, Surplus Space opened with its inaugural exhibition “Unlawfully Constructed” at the Wuchang 403 International Art Center. By September 2025, it will have spanned a full decade. A ten-year tenure, in today’s art ecosystem, already verges on a “miracle.”

Over this decade, we have organized 30 exhibitions – including the first solo shows for several young artists – alongside 16 academic forums and lectures. Our exhibition space has relocated three times, yet we have never strayed from the positioning and self-awareness inherent to being ”Surplus.” Coinciding with its 10th anniversary, Surplus Space will move to the Wuhan Design Heart on Zhongshan Avenue in Jiang’an District, embracing a new beginning in a new venue.

This 10th-anniversary special exhibition, titled “Surplus Value,” responds both to the labor time – identified by Marx as latent yet obscured within commodities – and to what Agamben describes as potentiality suspended outside institutionalized time, remaining unused. Surplus Space seeks to safeguard a zone of “surplus time” for experimentation and rupture amid an increasingly capitalized art mechanism, consistently providing fertile ground for under-recognized practices and fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue.

“Surplus” is both what is excessive and a space of exception. It is the product of structural exclusion, yet it may also become the starting point for returning to the authenticity of life and rebuilding artistic connections. It is fragile yet tenacious; it exists at the margins yet is perpetually present. In this seemingly ruinous terrain, what we strive to unearth is precisely that unquantified yet tangible value – the time that cannot be fully absorbed, the labor that cannot be fully exchanged, and the creativity that cannot be entirely captured by mainstream narratives.

Over ten years of footsteps, ”Surplus” has evolved from a concept into an ecosystem. It does not belong to the center, yet it persistently makes its voice heard from the interstices, reconstructing dignity within the remainder.