On June 1st, the same day as Children's Day, the 4th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival was launched online and offline, engaging more than 5,000 young artists, designers, writers, and scholars from various professional fields across Zhejiang. 

With the theme of "vital force", the fourth Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival aims to explore the viability and activity of living in reality, and the ability and wisdom human beings consciously seeking for during the critical period of the pandemic. The theme not only dives deep into human relations and laws of things in daily life but also inspires everyone’s understanding of "living" and immediate awareness of the "relevance to individuals".

The festival is mainly based on the graduation season of the China Academy of Art and Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, and a total of 13 colleges and universities in Zhejiang jointly join the online exhibitions. The offline exhibition will be presented in ten venues across Hangzhou, with a total exhibition area of about 50,000 square meters. A total of more than 3,000 works will be put on exhibition. 

As the festival tries to convey, the theme of "vital force" is the foundation of all intellectual thoughts and artistic creation since ancient times, and endows them with the depth of reality and vitality of life. "Life" is the impulse and energy, and "living" is the action and creation in the world. "Vital force" is the experience and ability, the understanding of reality, and practical skills that a person has to live actively. It includes concerns for the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, and also contains a deep empathy for others, distant places, and all things and life.

At the opening ceremony of the fourth Zhijiang International Youth Festival, the "CAACOSMOS - China Academy of Art Online Art Community", a future-oriented super application scene based on the concept of "One Code, One World in One Life" was released to the public. It is an art community for all people who are engaged in art and love art to draw inspiration, present themselves, learn and communicate online.

An introduction video of the "CAACOSMOS" community

Meanwhile, CAACOSMOS provides protection for the copyrights of works of art, builds new scenes of life and communication in an imaginative way, creates mixed reality content, and finally forms a virtual space that embraces online exhibitions, information, courses, lectures, forums, workshops, and live streaming studios, and adapts to the future digital life, digital communication, and artistic creation.

Since 2010, China Academy of Art has showcased its teaching and creative achievements to the public in a new form of "Graduation Exhibition Week" — the first of its kind in art academies. In 2019, on the basis of the academy’s graduation season, the China Academy of Art united with the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music to link literature and science, cultural creativity and technological innovation, and other fields to launch the Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival. This year, there will be more than 2,500 graduates, and a total of over 3,000 sets of works will be exhibited. 1,757 undergraduates, 631 master's students, and 87 doctoral students from 17 teaching units are involved in a total of 50 exhibitions. 

The exhibition will last from June 1st to 12th, and various exhibitions and performances will be open to the public.

Editor: Ye Ke