THIS summer, the coastal enclave of Shekou invites you to wander its streets and discover art around every corner. The 10th Shekou AMaS (Amid Mountains and Seas) art festival kicks off Friday, transforming the district into a vibrant, interactive cultural landscape.

Themed “BINGO! Shekou,” the festival liberates art from galleries and scatters it into the everyday spaces of the community: fruit shops, hardware stores, corner parks, and seaside promenades.

Hang Se Hau (Walk Shekou)

The “Hang Se Hau” section invites 22 outstanding local creators to temporarily set aside their artist identities and become “shop owners” of a new art district. Each brings distinctive artistic interventions to the neighborhood. Art here is no longer a distant concept but, as Michel de Certeau might put it, a series of small, clever daily practices: a walk, a pause, a casual glance upward.

Dates: Through Aug. 30

Venues: Sea World, Taizi Bay Coastal City VILLA, Nanhai E-Cool, Sea World Culture and Arts Center

Asian Youth Trend Culture Festival

The event features two main sections: a friendly competition with 20 graffiti artists from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao (paired by random draw), alongside a graffiti culture exhibition.

The festival also teams up with renowned Shenzhen street artist WHYYY (Huang Liwei) for a graffiti project that fuses the passion of street art with the city’s cultural depth, turning urban blocks into an open-air public art museum.

Exhibition dates: Through Aug. 30

Venue: Art store, L1, Sea World Culture and Arts Center

Solo exhibition by YKON

Artist YKON’s solo exhibition is titled “Under the Dream Scale Mark.” It is both a look back at fading fragments of the past and a reconstruction of personal and collective memory. YKON employs collage, smearing, graininess, and dislocation — not to restore original images, but to create a deliberate “deviation” from them.

Dates: Through July 19

Venue: L1, Sea World Culture and Arts Center

World Cup x artist collaboration

With World Cup fever approaching, artist Tan Xuan has created a football-themed map of Shekou. Key landmarks become anchors for a colorful illustration that weaves football into Shekou’s open, inclusive, vibrant urban fabric. The work transforms public spaces into immersive World Cup atmospheres, letting passersby feel the collision of football passion and artistic creativity.

Dates: Through the end of June

Venues: Sea World, Taizi Bay Coastal City VILLA

‘The Deal’ Avenue

Inspired by the narrative aesthetics of the play “The Deal,” Sea World has extended theatrical elements — classic printing factory motifs, stage art styling, retro French flair — from the ship’s interior to the open deck and waterfront public space. The result is an outdoor literary scene for strolling, pausing, and immersive photo-taking.

Dates: Through Nov. 25

Venue: Central square of Sea World

‘Wandering the Streets’ artist pop-ups

This section includes a series of community-based activities. Artists intervene in the community through performance, co-creation, and exchange. Twenty-two artists will pop up at Fisherman’s Wharf, alleyway restaurants, kindergartens, and schools. Through workshops, dialogues, and collaborative creation, they bring art into real life using their bodies and actions, sparking cross-dimensional inspiration and creative collisions.

Dates: Through Aug. 30

Venues: Throughout Shekou

Two highlighted exhibitions

“Lion’s Big Mouth”: Artist Shen Liang’s first solo exhibition in South China features striking lion paintings from 2024 onward, including a three-meter-tall vertical scroll and new “painted book” series. Northern and southern lions stand side by side in this super-migrant city, where their collective roar may draw all “lion lovers.”

Notably, the exhibition also includes two related works by pioneering Chinese contemporary artist Yu Youhan: “Lion and Me” (1998) and “Lion and Man” (2001), creating a cross-generational dialogue spanning more than two decades.

Dates: Through June 26

Venue: Gallery MC, L2, Sea World Culture and Arts Center

“Emergent Third”: This is Italian artist Robert Bosisio’s second solo exhibition at the Wonespace. It debuts the artist’s latest “Combination” series alongside his classic “Interior” and “Portrait” works, showcasing his ongoing exploration of color interaction, compositional relationships, and modes of seeing.

Dates: Through Aug. 2

Venue: Wonespace, L2, Sea World Culture and Arts Center(Tang Li)