The Perfect Path: Hangzhou, Marco Polo’s “city of heaven”

The Perfect Path: Hangzhou, Marco Polo’s “city of heaven” exhibition opens at the Art Museum of China Academy of Art.

Recently, The Perfect Path: Hangzhou, Marco Polo’s “city of heaven” exhibition opened with an inaugural press conference at the Art Museum of China Academy of Art (CAA), a national key art museum in China.

On the 700th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo, La Biennale di Venezia with its Historical Archive of the Contemporary Arts (ASAC) celebrates in Hangzhou, with the special support of the Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai and the Italian Cultural Institute in Shanghai, his extraordinary abilities as a traveler and connoisseur of peoples with a special project. The exhibition is jointly hosted by CAA and La Biennale di Venezia and organized by the Art Museum of CAA and ASAC.

The year 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Italy, with both governments jointly releasing the Action Plan on Strengthening the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (2024–2027) in July. This exhibition is the sign of the first collaboration arising from the three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by La Biennale di Venezia and CAA on August 8, 2024. To commemorate Marco Polo as a cultural envoy between China and Italy, La Biennale di Venezia launched the project The Wind Makes the Sky, which retraces his footsteps.

The first leg of this journey following in his footsteps is The Perfect Path, a collective exhibition, with the support of the China Academy of Art, that begins its reflections on the basis of the research that has been cultivated at the Academy. The Perfect Path, the title of the exhibition, is one of the ways to describe the concept of dao. Around this principle, it gathers a group of Chinese artists who have distinguished themselves for their artistic genres, with an outlook mindful of tradition which at the same time fully embraces the latest technological developments. The exhibition displays and enhances the works of artists operating within the Chinese artistic system, which continues to reveal itself as one of the most significant areas of renewal in the languages of visual art, with the aim of portraying a generation that has envisioned and traced an original and innovative path rooted in a millenary tradition.

Outside the CAA art museum, a stage designed by the Istanbul-native artist Cevdet Erek, Amfibio, welcomes the public into a space of encounter designed to be shaped and adapted to each location along the route traveled by La Biennale. Inside the exhibition hall, works by artists and creative collectives active in China’s contemporary art system are presented, listed alphabetically by surname: Cao Shu, Chen Liang, Cheng Ran, Dai Chenlian, Feng Bingyi, Gao Shiqiang + Mountain Water Collective, Xu Jiang (artist at the 10th International Architecture Exhibition Venice), Kang Kaiwen, Liu Wei (artist at the 51st and 58th International Art Exhibitions Venice), Liu Yi, Qiu Zhijie (artist at the 53rd and 56th International Art Exhibition Venice, curator of the China Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition Venice), Shi Bing + Lin Yi, Yang Fudong (artist at the 50th and 52nd International Art Exhibitions Venice), Ye Yufeng, Yi Lian, Ying Xinshun, Yuan Keru, along with creative teams from the School of Film Art and the School of Animation and Games, CAA. The exhibition includes Xu Jiang’s bronze sculpture Is Symbiosis Possible?, Qiu Zhijie’s ink-on-paper work Hairy Crab: The Artistic Ecology Map, Gao Shiqiang and Mountain Water Collective’s video work Mountain Water: Six Chapters of Yunshan, Liu Wei’s installation Look, a Book!, Yang Fudong’s black-and-white film Strange Paradise, Yi Lian’s photography series Dispersed Continent and Narrative of a Street, Yuan Keru’s video installation Eternity and the Moment, Cao Shu’s video installation Demon Sugar, among others.

The exhibition opened to the public on November 11 and will run until January 10, 2025.