China, France to exchange installation art this summer

Qiu Zhijie is one of the 10 artists featured in the annual Sino-French project.[Photo provided to China Daily]

An outdoor exhibition of installation art, featuring art in containers, will start its world tour in July in Shandong province's Qingdao.

It'll then travel to other cities in China and later head for France.

Elsewhere Is Here comprises 10 well-known artists from China and France, including Qiu Zhijie, Huang Jiancheng, Yan Lei, Matalie Crasset and Mathieu Dorval.

They've been working on their creations for the show in Beijing since May.

Each artist will produce an installation in a shipping container.

By using containers as art spaces, the artists will "create a moving museum", says Fan Di'an, curator of the show and president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Fan says the show of art in 10 containers is easy to display in any public space in cities, making it a good option for cultural exchanges among places that are far away from one another.

The outdoor exhibition will take place in Qingdao in July and later tour other cities like Chengdu, Sichuan province; Changsha, Hunan province; and Quanzhou, Fujian province.

In July 2017, it will be presented at Futuroscope, a theme park in Vienne, France, and then tour other countries in Europe.

Qiu says he was intrigued by the idea of creating an installation in a container. For his previous shows, he had to create his installation each time it was shown.

"For this work done in a container, I just need to do one installation for all the shows," says Qiu.

Joking about his previous experiences, he says he was either setting up his installation work in the show space or was on the road to do it.

Qiu's installations are always large-scale ones. They feature videos, photographs and lots of sections made of various items.

For instance, in his Project of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, he produced lots of foot-like items crafted from bamboo with different plants inside.

Guan Huaibin, another artist participating in the show, says containers are interesting carriers that make him think about their roles in transmitting culture and ideas across the world.

"For the past 30 years, goods made in China are shipped to places all over the world via containers, and goods made in other countries are also brought back to China," says Guan, who is known for integrating classical Chinese gardens' aesthetics into his installations.

Elsewhere Is Here is an annual show initiated in 2012 by France's former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Every year, artists from the two countries produce works in a different medium for display in Futuroscope.