On the Town: Culture comes from the sparks of creativity, which are generated by exchanges, said Li Xiangyang, director of the Shanghai Arts Museum at the opening of an exhibition of Chinese art in Dublin this week.
Some of the participating artists in Dreaming of the Dragon's Nation: Contemporary Art from China at the Irish Museum of Modern Art attended the official opening.
Shi Hui, a sculptor from Shanghai, says the paper pulp material she uses in her work is "very unusual . . . You feel it is soft but sometimes it has structure as well. It is soft and hard. I use it to create an image of strength," she says.
Liu Jianhua, another Chinese artist whose work, Map of Dublin, forms part of the exhibition, said he "wanted to explore through pottery how fragile humans are", and also, "when a city becomes a big city, to look at the patterns inherent in that".
Artists in China today are "looking at the new China, which has embraced the new capitalism, they are exploring Chinese identity", said artist Amanda Coogan, who is the 2004 AIB Artist of Promise.
Curated by Li Xu, director of academic research at the Shanghai Art Museum, the show demonstrates, through 59 works, "the conditions of contemporary art growing in China".
Others at the opening included artist Clare Langan, whose work was on view in Beijing and Shanghai earlier this year; Richard Wakely, Commissioner of the China Ireland Cultural Exchange; artist and playwright Gerard Mannix Flynn and Niamh Smyth, of the Wesleyan Chapel Arts, Cultural and Tourism Centre, in Bailieborough, Co Cavan.