NANJING, China, Jan. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- "This Is The Yangtze River" Digital Exhibition is now on display at Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts in Nanjing from November 2023 throughout January 2024, aiming to offer an ultimate cultural feast about the Yangtze River to the public.

The Yangtze River has a total length of 6363 kilometers. From its source on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the Yangtze River crosses China from west to east, flowing through glaciers, cliffs and valleys, passing by towns, dwellings and ruins, and finally arriving at the mouth of the East Sea in the industrialized area around Shanghai.

How was the Yangtze River defined in the past? The Yangtze River is the poetry of the earth, the pivot of time, the vessel of imagination and the bond of emotions. Over the millennia, the culture of the Yangtze River, which has intersected and developed in time and space, has become both a tangible natural and human landscape and an intangible landscape of imagination, embodying the collective memory and identity of the Chinese nation.

Through a vast collection of digital ink-wash paintings, split screen videos, woodblock prints, sound visualization etc., this 2500-square-metre exhibition hall showcases vibrant paintings, films, and immersive installations made by 16 talented artists featuring top artist groups with technologies of 4K interaction, Unity 3D, AI, 3D mapping, providing visitors with a digital journey to explore the majesty and romance of the great mother river of China.

From the source to the end of the Yangtze River, a group of artists travelled across mountains and the sea from west to east, capturing a variety of historical and natural images alongside riverbanks and exploring various indigenous cultures nurtured by the longest river of the world.

When you pay a visit to the digital exhibition, you will not miss the digital space artwork of "Sky Flow" inspired by a classical Chinese poem describing how grand and magnificent the Yangtze River is, immersing visitors into the cultural aesthetics while walking around this visual art space. This is created by Wang Zhi'ou, a new media artist and curator, as the founder of BLACKBOW which designed general visual effects for the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

"The Poetic Realm of the Yangtze River" is definitely one not to miss while it is shown as a poetic map made by an art form of "ink on paper". This map portrays the geographical latitude of the Yangtze River from Qiu Zhijie's exploration into avant-garde art. His artworks use fascinating methods to merge history and fantasy of the Chinese culture.

Pan Jingru, the Associate Professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, photographic artist Wang Yan, cross-media artist Chen Tianchan, German digital artist Philipp Artus and other artists used digital images to trace the source and record every aspect of the river, showing the wonders and stories of living creatures.

The Yangtze River contains the cipher for the exploration of the space-time of civilization. In the era of printed civilization, the classical literary works describing and praising the Yangtze River have made it a common symbol of the Chinese nation. In the era of electronic civilization, radio, film and television works represented by "Story of the Yangtze River" have shaped the Yangtze River into a geographical textbook of patriotism, allowing us to experience the diverse forms and flourishing lives along the Yangtze River. The world is entering the era of digital civilization. How can the Yangtze River be redefined in the future?

The soul of the vast and vigorous Chinese civilization, with digital technology as its wing and medium, creates unprecedented new forms of human culture and reaches the delicate and subtle emotional experiences that have never been touched. The Yangtze River in the digital age should be a cultural universe of space-time dialogue and information linkage, which is at the same time close to everyone and involves everyone. In this exhibition, ten keywords such as water, rice, earth, wood, culture, language, silk, tea, boat and bridge are used to construct a Yangtze River that belongs to everyone. Tang poetry, Song landscapes, the sound of all things, the book of the earth... in the cultural universe of the Yangtze River, you can see yourself, imagine the future — this is the meaning of the Yangtze River in the digital age.

Where:
Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts
181 Mengdu St. Nanjing, China

When: 
Until January 31, 2024 (Closed on Mondays)