Songs of the Earth: Artistic Documentary for a Better China, an exhibition hosted by China Academy of Art, featured the most significant amount of case studies on the Beautiful China Initiative. The exhibition kicked off at the China Millennium Monument on March 1. Through interviews with more than 300 artists, scholars, designers, entrepreneurs, and practitioners in 34 provinces and autonomous regions, researchers from the CAA Research Institute of the Beautiful China Initiative have accumulated a wealth of documents and video materials, successfully founding the country’s first Beautiful China Case Study Database.
Photo – courtesy of China Academy of Art ©
During the research, these case studies were sorted into four categories: Ecology, Village, Community, and Digital. In the exhibition, nearly 100 cases, selected from a pool of more than 300, vividly showcased the social, artistic, demonstrative, innovative, sustainable, and representative practices taking place across China since the reform and opening-up, especially in the past decade, demonstrating how a beautiful China is coming into being. The Beautiful China Online Interactive Archive System also debuted in the exhibition. Still in its initial stage, the system allows the viewers to find cases from their hometowns when sorted by region. The viewers can also select specific cases based on categories and practice attributes. Moreover, the system will go through constant upgrades to include a variety of functions, such as digital twins of the exhibition and research, the digital map and family tree of the cases, and the records of follow-up research of the proposals. The exhibition connected an army of practitioners to form an “action network”, collecting over 100 “future-oriented proposals” on how to build a better life. Such “network of intelligence”, gathering talents to create border-crossing innovation in the Beautiful China Initiative, illustrated the multiple dimensions involved in building a beautiful China. And bit by bit, the network pooled efforts from countless practitioners to write magnificent songs of the earth for the Beautiful China Initiative.
The Beautiful China Initiative involves ecology, production, and life, affecting the natural environment, urban and rural features, industrial innovation, humanistic aspects, social ethics and more. From regional development to community-level governance, from urban and rural planning to community empowerment, from ecological restoration to rural revitalization and eventually to the physical and mental health of every individual, all of these are included in the great cause of building a beautiful China.
The Academy has taken action to promote the Beautiful China Initiative over the last few years. Committed to the principle of “taking the fields as a classroom”, the Academy has established more than 100 “rural colleges” in different cities, towns, and villages. As a result, a nationwide network for practical education has taken root in China. In the past decade, about 80,000 students have travelled to 28 provinces to participate in people-oriented art activities. While contributing to social development through artworks, these young students also gained a deeper understanding of China’s society and a stronger sense of social identity, thus becoming more concerned about our society and country. In 2021, China Academy of Art established the Research Institute of Beautiful China, creating new possibilities of art and life by crossing boundaries and inspiring new ways to create artworks through practices. The institute serves as a platform for research and innovation, through which artist think tanks, public aesthetics, and social innovation converge and new practices empowering social development via art and culture are developed.
