In recent years, the largest folk art exhibition in Pudong has opened, to see how "old crafts" can tell "new stories" well

The interesting news of Yunnan elephants walking over a thousand kilometers has become the material of the comic strip. Dancers use Pudong cloth as props to stir up popular environmental choreography, and the music of Pudong style pipa adds poetic and picturesque elements to the exhibition hall

On September 7th, the "New Chapter of Ancient Charm - Pudong Folk Art Exhibition" opened in the Art Exhibition Hall of the Pudong New Area Cultural and Art Guidance Center. Shanghai artists, including Pudong, presented 89 excellent folk art works to the audience, including more than ten specially invited works from the Shanghai Folk Literature and Art Association. Multiple "father daughter" and "master apprentice" authors joined hands to participate in the exhibition, telling "new stories" with "old skills".

As the largest folk art exhibition in Pudong in recent years, the exhibition works contain the author's sincere feelings and deep thinking about local memory and traditional culture: the elderly audience carefully look for the details of traditional Jiangnan folk houses in the Paper Cuttings work "Ya Ting". Before the farmer painted "A Lifetime of Peach Blossoms", the audience revisited their hometown's "exclusive memory" from planting seedlings to blooming peach blossoms, and then to a bountiful peach harvest. In the comic book "Outside the Car Window", the author takes the subway window as the "eye" of creation, connecting the warmth and beauty of the mother and daughter generations with the pastoral scenery outside the window. More viewers have seen installation works that combine earth cloth and mirror surface. They first marvel at the avant-garde fashion, and upon closer inspection, they realize that this is not the familiar Pudong specialty "earth cloth"? Then he smiled and exclaimed, "Earth cloth is not earth!"

Li Shoubai, vice chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles, chairman of the Shanghai Folk Literature and Art Association, and representative inheritor of the "intangible cultural heritage" Paper Cuttings, and his daughter Li Shiyi participated in the exhibition with Paper Cuttings works. His father recalled the elegance and tranquility of the old residence in the south of the Yangtze River with works, and her daughter Li Shiyi's works portrayed the image of urban people struggling to run with modern skills. Xi Xiaoqin, a national inheritor of Paper Cuttings in Shanghai, and Shi Qinling, an apprentice, also participated in the exhibition with their own Paper Cuttings works. The two sets of works have a dialogue between ancient and modern times, but they are also similar and reflect the achievements of Shanghai's social and economic development.

I have studied with Teacher Xi Xiaoqin and worked together for more than ten years. Now, I often bring new works to Teacher Xi and ask her for more guidance. Now, Shi Qinling, who was born in 1987, also teaches in community schools and university campuses. She has accumulated many experiences in spreading intangible cultural heritage. She said: "For young people, we can first stimulate interest through Paper Cuttings cultural and creative products, and then introduce Paper Cuttings history, techniques and other content, so that it is easier to inherit intangible cultural heritage."

What surprised the audience even more was the introduction of environmental choreography in this exhibition. The dancers dance around the installation work "Face to Face", with cloth, human, and mirror surfaces constantly meeting and separating from each other in the flow of pipa performance and dance, interpreting the theme of the work in another artistic form and bringing diverse enjoyment to the audience.

The exhibition organizer introduced that Pudong has always nurtured a wide variety of imaginative and skilled folk art. Feeling the real human fireworks in farmer paintings and touching the historical context of Pudong from the texture of the earth cloth is an irreplaceable humanistic significance of folk art, and also an important aesthetic value of folk art as a local art crystallization. In recent years, China-Chic is moving, intangible cultural heritage is popular, and folk art has ushered in a new development opportunity. The old branch of traditional folk art has nurtured new artistic attempts with its deep roots and lush leaves. Many young creators constantly innovate and produce fruitful results with the rich soil of folk art as nourishment.

It is reported that after the Pudong Folk Art Exhibition, the Pudong New Area Cultural and Art Guidance Center will continue to innovate, plan and launch art exhibitions with different themes to cater to the appreciation tastes and needs of audiences of different age groups, turn the exhibition hall into a big classroom for national aesthetic education, a big stage for showcasing artistic style, and provide rich cultural and spiritual nourishment for the new era.

The exhibition will continue until September 21st.

Text/Photography: Cao Zhiguang

*Reprinted from official WeChat account released by Pudong