Exhibition News

Illustrating the Ever-renewing Spirit of the Silk Road by Hundreds of Participating Countries

Appreciating Exchange and Integration of World Civilizations by Millions of Attentive Audiences

The 7^th Beijing International Art Biennale, China 2017 co-sponsored by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Beijing Municipal Government and China Artists Association with the theme of “The Silk Road and World Civilizations”will be held at the National Art Museum of China on September 24^th. This year also marks the 15^th anniversary of Beijing Biennale. Initiated in 2003, the Beijing Biennale has successfully held six sessions and the number of participating countries has increased from 45 in the first session to 102 in the seventh one. There are altogether more than 4000 artists from different countries participated in the exhibition and millions of audiences visited the exhibition.

It is the first time that the number of participating countries of the Beijing Biennale surpassed 100 since 2003 and it is the first international exhibition that involved more than 100 countries, which shows that its international popularity, influence and attraction is ever increasing and in turn add the charisma of the metropolitan Beijing, the ancient cultural city. The 7^th Beijing Biennale involved 601 pieces of artwork from 567 artists of different countries. Among all those artworks, 411 pieces (including special exhibitions) are from foreign countries and 190 pieces are from China. Apart from the theme exhibition, there are six special exhibitions, namely “Special Exhibition of Contemporary Art of Georgia”, “Special Exhibition of Contemporary Art of Greece”, “Special Exhibition of Contemporary Art of Indonesia”, “Special Exhibition of Contemporary Art of Mongolia”, “The Tour of Art from Tintoretto to Lilanga” and “Special Exhibition of Donated Artworks from Previous Beijing Biennales”. More than 600 pieces of artwork representative of more than 600 different artistic styles were selected from millions of applications featured by tens of thousands of artistic styles. It can be obviously seen that the theme of “The Silk Road and World Civilization” drew global attention. It’s worth mentioning that the organizing committee specially invited several Chinese artists to create two big-sized theme based artworks. One is six-meter-long Chinese painting A New Chapter of the Maritime Silk Road and the other is eight-meter-long oil painting The New Chapter of the Silk Road.

A New Chapter of the Maritime Silk Road

Zheng Baizhong(China) / 2017 / heavy color on paper / 300cm×600cm

Through the combination of historical and realistic themes, the artist ingeniously places the ancient and modern maritime Silk Roads into the same time and space. Starting from the Quanzhou Port in China, the ships pass along the Shanghai Port to Nara, Japan, to Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, to Brunei, to the Palace of Malaysia… showing the prosperity of the shipping from the East to the West and the exchange and development of Chinese civilization and world civilizations. The picture is divided into three parts: Asia, Europe and Africa. The Indonesian Houses of Parliament is prominent in the picture while the flourishing Gwadar Port in Pakistan and the Convoy of Chinese Navy in the Gulf of Aden are especially emphasized. The artist adopts the unique artistic language of contemporary heavycolor gongbi painting, fully demonstrating the new chapter of the Maritime Silk Road in the 21st Century.

The New Chapter of the Silk Road

Feng Lumin, Yang Xiaomao, Zhang Yanzhao, Yan Yaya(China) / 2017 / oil on canvas / 260cm×800cm

As a large-scale themed painting for this year’s Beijing Biennale, it presents a panoramic view of the new chapter of the ancient Silk Road under the leading of the Belt and Road Initiative advocated by the Chinese government in the 21st century. The distant view presents human geography and natural landscapes, which starts at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, China, all the way across the river, Gobi, snow mountain, desert, grassland until the sea. The route passes though Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, and finally arrives in Rotterdam, Holland, while the whole line is dotted with the symbol of high-speed railway. The middle view presents as fully as possible the major elements of projects along the "Belt and Road", showing in turn the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, "bullet" train, Kanas Thermal Power Plant, Kashgar Western and Central Asian Bazaar for International Trade, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, OECD, Pakistan Transnational Highway, starting point of the Eurasian Continental Bridge, Gwadar Port in Pakistan, Vietnam dam built by China and other important facilities. The China-Europe Train links the close view, including infrastructure workers, University of Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan, Confucius Institute, border trade transportation, peacekeeping force, Chinese medical team in Africa and so on.