Porcelain capital Dehua inspires artists at home and abroad

All the participants from the event "2015 Sino-foreign Art Talk" pose for a group photo at Wanqi Art Center in Dehua, Quanzhou of Fujian province, July 21, 2015. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The "2015 Sino-foreign Art Talk" is being held in Dehua county in Quanzhou city of Fujian province during July 10-22. With the theme of "Returning and Setting Sail", the program invites 28 renowned foreign artists and Chinese artists gathering in the ancient ceramic capital Dehua to create inspiring artworks.

The foreign artists from Germany, UK, America, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Japan got the chance to learn about traditional Chinese porcelain culture in Dehua and create their own distinctive artworks using the traditional material porcelain clay.

Professor Zhu Qingsheng from Peking University, who is an academic director for the event, said, "Chinese and foreign artists work on their art at the same time using the same medium at China's porcelain capital Dehua, from which we can see their different understandings of the same material. This gives a global vision to the traditional material, and provides more possibilities for the contemporary exploration of ceramics."

After 10 days of creation, selected works from these artists were exhibited in Wanqi Art Center in Dehua, allowing audiences to view the artworks.

"This is a whole new world opening to me, like completely diving into ceramics and discovering ceramics. There is so much knowledge here," Brigitte Antonia Jacoba, one of the participating artists from Netherland told China Daily. "My friend says that 'You did not discover ceramics, ceramics discovered you. It came to you.'"

The event is hosted by Art China and Fujian Wanqi Arts Center, and supervised by the State Council Information Office in China and the China National Tourism Administration.

Dehua county in Quanzhou of Fujian province was one of the famous places in South China for making and exporting ceramic products and has a long history of doing so. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Dehua ceramics were an important commodity on the Maritime Silk Road exported into Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and were shipped in large quantities.

So far, 185 kiln ruins that were used to make export goods have been found in Dehua. The Dehua ceramics are in the collections of important museums of more than 40 countries throughout both Europe and America. Dehua Kilns are praised by China and international academia as the "World's official kilns".