"Vital Force -- The 4th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival in 2022" and Graduation Season of China Academy of Art

Use the perception and creativity of art, with the enthusiasm, sincerity and goodwill of human nature, to defend the positivity and tenacity of life, to praise the openness and broad-mind of life, and to live an "upward and forward life" of human beings.

HANGZHOU, China, June 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 1st, "Vital Force — The 4th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival" was launched online and offline, focusing on the future and on young people, uniting cultural and artistic resources on the provincial, city and district levels, and holding cultural and artistic events all over Hangzhou. The exhibition  is from June 1st to 12th, and various exhibitions and performances are open to the public. The 4th Youth Art Festival is mainly based on the graduation season of China Academy of Art, and a total of 13 colleges and universities in Zhejiang jointly launch an online graduation exhibition. The offline exhibition will be presented in ten venues in Hangzhou, with a total exhibition area of about 50,000 square meters. More than 3,000 works will be exhibited, and over 5,000 young artists, designers, writers and scholars will join online and offline to present a blooming and youthful art feast in the city.

Explore an "Upward and Forward Life" with "Vital Force"

Since 2010, China Academy of Art has showcased its teaching and creative achievements to the public in a new form of "Graduation Exhibition Week" — the first of its kind in art academies. In 2019, on the basis of the academy's graduation season, China Academy of Art linked literature and science, cultural creativity and technological innovation and other fields to launch the Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival. In this year's graduation season of the China Academy of Art, there are more than 2,500 graduates, and a total of more than 3,000 sets of works will be exhibited. 1,757 undergraduates, 631 master students, and 87 doctoral students from 17 teaching units are involved in a total of 50 exhibitions. It has always been the original intention and vision of the academy to let the graduation season go out of the campus, art empathize with the people, universities integrate with the city, the teaching achievements be shared with the society, and to create an "academy without walls".

The theme of this year's Youth Art Festival is "Vital Force", which refers to the viability and activity of living beings in reality, and the ability and wisdom human beings consciously seek for at the inflection point of the times caused by the epidemic. The specific and subtle "Vital Force" once neglected and forgotten has returned to the field of art education with unprecedented importance and urgency. It not only dives deep into human relations and laws of things in daily food, clothing, shelter and transport, but inspires everyone's understanding of "living" and immediate awareness of "relevance to me".

"Vital Force" is the foundation of all intellectual thoughts and artistic creation since ancient times, and endows them with the depth of reality and vitality of life. "Life" is the impulse and energy, and "living" is the action and creation in the world. Vital Force is the experience and ability, the understanding of reality and practical skills that a person has to live actively. It includes concerns for the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, and also contains the deep empathy for others, distant places, and all things and life.

Create "One Code, One World in One Life" in CAACOSMOS "Online Art Community"

CAACOSMOS -"China Academy of Art Online Art Community" was released at the opening ceremony of the Youth Art Festival. As an unique online art community of China Academy of Art, this is a future-oriented super digital application scene based on "One Code, One World in One Life", an art community for all people who are engaged in art and love art to draw inspiration, present themselves, learn and communicate online. Meanwhile, CAACOSMOS provides protection for the copyrights of works of art, builds new scenes of life and communication in an imaginative way, creates mixed reality content, and finally forms a virtual space that embraces online exhibitions, information, courses, lectures, forums, workshops, and live streaming studios, and adapts to the future digital life, digital communication and artistic creation.

Traditional Highland, Innovative Design, Integration of Science and Art, National Tide Futurism
Begin and Restart

As a highland of traditional disciplines, the School of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy takes "One Day's Traces" as the sub-theme of the graduation exhibition. It presents 494 works of 190 undergraduates, master and doctoral graduates from the School of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, reflecting their creativity of thinking, study and exploration in diverse thoughts, perspectives and fields in daily life and learning stages.

The School of Design & Innovation is a pioneer in the integration of science and art in China Academy of Art. The year 2022 will witness the school's first graduation exhibition which is also an important achievement test in the history of art education and teaching results in the integrative teaching mode for students of liberal arts, science and arts. The exhibition focuses on new technological changes, constantly reshapes the challenges and opportunities of the world pattern, responds to social concern with design and thinking, and imagines the possibility of future with design and innovative experiments. In September 2021, the School of Design & Innovation settled in the new Liangzhu Campus, a "birthplace of Chinese civilization" and "the forefront of the digital economy". Centering on the cultural resources and industrial characteristics and advantages of the Yangtze River Delta, it established three majors — art and technology, industrial design and digital media art, and explores a new mechanism for talents, teaching, management and education.

The young artists of the School of Intermedia Arts reflect the experimental spirit and critical attitude in their artistic practices through multi-presentation and mixed-media artistic creation. The School of Design takes "In Life" as the theme of this graduation exhibition because design is not only in "in life", but also "in the field of life", aiming to tap young artists' or designers' inner perception of life.

The 2022 Graduation Exhibition of the School of Film and Animation is a retrospective and summary of the development of the discipline in the past 20 years, held at the time when the School of Film and School of Animation and Games are newly established, which is also called the "restart" of the two schools.

This year is the fifth year for the School of Art Administration and Education to take "Vital Force" as the theme of the graduation exhibition. The school is committed to the systematic construction of the social aesthetic education cycle, and guides teachers and students to use the creativity of art and the goodwill of humanity to defend the positivity and tenacity, openness and broad-mind of life and to generate the power to live an "upward and forward life".

At the same time, the inspiration that "Vital Force" gives all in 2022 will be jointly explained by the School of Painting's "Painting & Living", the School of Sculpture and Public Art's "Empathy Environment", the School of Crafts' "Appreciating Craft", the School of Architecture's "The Period of Reflection Is Coming", the School of Arts and Humanities' "Thinking Far: Academic and Life", the School of Foundation Studies' "Life Is the Field", the International College's "Home", the Institute of International Collaboration's "Westward Spread of Chinese Culture", the Design Industry Innovation Center's "Join the New Past", and the Centre for Chinese Visual Studies' "Artistic Power of Life".

SOURCE China Academy of Art