New Folk Art Review | The whole city of Shanghai is a big stage

In a special "art gallery", classic paintings are suddenly given "life" - the audience is suddenly on the banks of the Seine, having a luncheon with the celebrities of Paris, and suddenly breaking into the last supper of Jesus and the twelve apostles... At the Kohler Shanghai Experience Center, a unique immersive art exhibition was staged, the works of the museum were re-recognized from a new perspective, and the classic art came down from the distant wall of the museum, approached people, and stopped. This is just one of the various art exhibition forms in Shanghai now, and in the just-concluded Urban Space Art Season, more art exhibitions and art performances attract people to pay more attention to the city and the community, and to pay more attention to the city and the community in more ways. Shanghai is like a large open exhibition field, where people can be spectators or participants, creators or passers-by, painters or objects to be painted... On the subway, on the bus, on the streets that travel every day, in the daily life of the city, and the unexpected encounter with art, it becomes a shortcut to help people open their emotions and find a spiritual habitat.

Illustration: Various performances held in community scenes Infographic

While we can't directly substitute the expectation of visiting regular art galleries, museums, and theater performances into community visits and viewings, the open-ended experience is a deeper connection to urban life.

For example, a small project "Poetry One-Way Street" of the Siping Sample Community Exhibition in Yangpu District, which has recently caused great repercussions, projects on the road with colorful leaves of different postures and varieties, accompanied by interesting poems, poems created by residents, not so particular about neat rhymes and confrontations, but carefully tasted, behind each poem is hidden a community memory. "I grew up in Anshan and moved away later / I came back here in 1997 to open a store / The first one was a bookstore / Many children were admitted to college later / I had to say hello when I came back / Hey, Boss Wei." And because the display content of the "poetry one-way street" is easy to reflect through short videos and photos, it has been widely and rapidly disseminated, and the popularity of the work has increased very rapidly.

For another example, the main exhibition hall of the "Flower Blossom Puhuitang" of the Tianlin Sample Community Exhibition in Xuhui District is considered to be one of the most pleasant places in this year's urban art season from the perspective of visiting experience, because one of them is a plant park transformed by the flower and bird market, which only retains the frame structure of the building, opens up the two-story slab, and increases the circulation of the first and second floors of space with bamboo tube hanging lights with a strong retro atmosphere and ecological characteristics. At the same time, it maintains the permeability of the entire underlying space, so that the closed obstacles that originally blocked the line of sight and circulation between the urban road and Puhuitang become an open and flowing space that runs through the city and nature, so that Puhuitang can be integrated into urban life.

For example, in Xinhua Street, we can see a lot of visitors, with city walks, volunteers leading groups to explain, individuals walking at will, etc. to explore, a visiting team slowly entered this old community. Related exhibitions, in addition to the main exhibition area of Shangsheng Xin, are distributed in many points in the community, and the whole tour takes a lot of time, but it also has the advantage that you can really visit this community. In the project "Anwa-ji Temple is a Road", artists connect with local residents in a more implicit way. On Fahua town road, there are some shops along the street that do not have a façade, but just open a hole in the window. Artist Yang Song bought a variety of materials from the store and made a golden frame outside the window hole. Not far from the hardware store, artist Liu Fujie launched a special cooperation with the Yuanyuan Clothing Store. She first selected the right clothing in the store, bought a batch of clothes at the price of the store, and then redesigned and made the materials of the purchased clothes as the work, and hung them at the door of the store to "sell at a price". Here, art may be intangible, but it has a connection with the community and leaves an impact.

In the recent lively "Haipai Modern Tide Art Season", the long-dormant North Sichuan Road was lit up by works of art. Julian Oppei "walking man" appears at the end of the alley, Lin Tianmiao builds "My Garden" in the Shikumen patio, Gao Weigang's astronauts suspend between the red brick walls, Yuan Kan's panda lies at the exit of the subway...

How many art galleries are there in Shanghai compared to the invisible exhibition spaces in these communities? Recently, Shanghai announced the "2021 Shanghai Art Museum Directory" a total of 96 art museums (including 25 state-owned art museums, 71 non-state-owned art museums), art museums are becoming an important window to show the charm of the international cultural metropolis, into the art museum to see the exhibition has become an important way of culture and leisure for the public, but also become an important channel to enhance the citizens' humanistic and artistic literacy. According to statistics, in 2020, the Shanghai Art Museum held 600 exhibitions and received 4.06 million visitors; this year, with the holding of the "Art Trade Month", in November and December alone, the city's art museums launched nearly 200 exhibitions and aesthetic education activities to create an atmosphere of shared art. If the primary responsibility of art museums is "protection" and "research", then the important responsibility of these art in the street community is to display, attract and educate, shape a more open space, awaken the audience's heart through exhibitions and projects, think about their own survival status, and respond. Shanghai is a giant exhibition field, and the beauty of the future is our common curatorial goal, whether it is in the sun or in the hall. (Xu Jiahe)