by Ye Zi

Fuliang County, a region of Jingdezhen, is known historically for its tea and kaolin clay used for making porcelain. In early 2021 the Jingdezhen government and Art Field China, an organisation based in Beijing organised an art festival titled Art at Fuliang (艺术在浮梁). World-renowned curator Fram Kitagawa, founder and director of the most successful rural revitalisation art festival in Japan Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, was invited as a consultant for the festival.

With China’s policy of promoting rural tourism in recent years and this being Kitagawa’s first rural project in China, Art at Fuliang was viewed more than just as a government-endorsed art festival. It was a social and cultural project with revitalisation efforts to rural areas. The festival naturally captured the attention of the media and art critics. However, how would artists approach local context to create artworks? And more importantly, would Kitagawa’s concept work in China?

The founder of Art Field China, Sun Qian, who had lived in Japan and worked with Fram Kitagawa in Echigo-Tsumari, was greatly inspired by the transformations she saw in Kitagawa’s projects: local residents, mostly the elderly, embrace and engage with the art activities; and the growing number of visitors, foreign as well as Japanese, coming to remote villages for art. With an aging population and loss of young people in rural areas, she believed that the villages in China, too, could benefit from art in a similar way. Art at Fuliang was the first project where she could test her beliefs. Sun Qian brought to life her vision, transforming an 18-square-kilometer Fuliang County into a regional art venue. Featuring 22 artworks by 25 artists from 5 countries, the international art festival took its start in one small village in Fuliang county, Hanxi Village in May 2021.