Threading a new look

Zhang Gan, the exhibition's chief curator, says the show is designed to bring warmth, closeness and healing, and the works will expose people to the fascination of material art and inspire them. He says the artists have engaged the audience in a discussion about existence and experience.

For a long time, many artists have been revisiting the theme of how modernity and other social changes are reshaping people's minds. Swiss artist Ursula Gerber Senger's work on show, Present Day Nomads III, is a group of human silhouettes made of iron wires and copper grids. She reveals an unstable, often trotting lifestyle, and a fragile inner side under an independent, strong outside of people, as they work and move around in a fast pace to keep up with the ever-changing world.

Peng Gang, vice-president of Tsinghua University, says he hopes the exhibition can motivate exchanges and research for artists and scholars from different countries, and by sharing the explorations of material art, people can learn from each other and build a human community with a shared future.