Around 200 works of art created by 198 children are being exhibited at the third Xiaoyan School of Art exhibition at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center.

Among the young exhibitors is a 4-year-old who brings chic shoes, envelopes and postcards; an 8-year-old who makes animated short films; and a teenager under 15 who independently finishes large installation artworks and mind-blowing architecture models.

The exhibition invites visitors to move the easels as they desire, to rearrange the exhibition, which makes the event more interactive. Cheng Nian, the executive curator and director of Nest Gallery, the event organizer, explained that they are trying to push the boundaries of galleries by putting huge oil paintings in the public space of the center.

“This is the first time staging an offline exhibition since the breakout of the pandemic, so we want it to be more interactive with visitors who have been distanced from artworks due to the COVID-19,” Cheng added.

“Arts plus technology” is a main concept discussed in the exhibition. Zhuo Mingda, the president of Xiaoyan School of Art, introduced a long popular strip of oil paintings featuring “human and animal,” which are co-created by several talented youngsters. “The process of creating artworks invokes reflections on technology. In an era with rapid development of technologies when photo apps could instantly turn photos into sketches, painting seems to be pointless.” The oil paintings are combinations of hand-drawing images and post-processing software, which corresponds to Zhuo’s predictions on the future trend of “arts plus technology.”

In addition to the commonly found “arts plus technology” works like the industrial abstract sculptures, some children are also inspired by traditional handicrafts.

The exhibition is also full of experimental ideas. For example, one explores the topic of virtual reality by drawing every frame of a recorded real-life video; another work is a hand-drawn stop-motion animation, a technique that was learned at the gallery’s summer lesson.

Wu Xiaoyan, the curator of the exhibition and founder of the Xiaoyan School of Arts, said that art education is much more than painting in front of the boards and has no boundary. “In the future, the school will keep creative and experimental,” she said.

Dates: Until March 31

Venue: Nest Gallery, 2/F, Sea World Culture and Arts Center, Nanshan District (南山区海上世界文化艺术中心二楼巢•美术馆)

Metro: Line 2 to Sea World Station (海上世界站), Exit A

(Wan Mengzhen, Yang Mei)