Ocean Flower Island Int'l Art Exhibition kicks off in Hainan

Themed The Tides of the Century, the 2020 Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition opened on Friday in south China's Hainan province. Greece is the Guest Country of Honor.

The exhibition is expected to run until Dec. 8 at the Ocean Flower Island Museum in Hainan's Danzhou city and will be one of the biggest art events during this year in China, offering visitors a visual feast not seen since before the COVID-19 epidemic.

The exhibition, inaugurated at the Ocean Flower Island, features in seven museums 176 works by 95 artists from 24 countries. The Greek exhibition, hosted in Building No. 6, brings together a selection of more than 50 works (sculptures, installations, videos, multimedia works, and digital art) by 34 contemporary artists of Greek origin.

Noting that 2021 is the Greece-China Year of Culture and Tourism at the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Georgios Iliopoulos, Greece's ambassador to China, stressed that Greece's participation in this exhibition marks the first event of this year's cultural activities that, in spite of the pandemic, will be significant and will help Greece to be re-introduced, once again, to China and its people.

Iliopoulos stressed that, the exhibition, which was originally set to take place last year and rescheduled due to the pandemic, was amazing and impressive, especially given that it was organized with most curators and artists not on the scene because of the epidemic.

Professor Ioannis Chrysoulakis, secretary general for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, extended his hope via video link for more activities during the Greece-China Year of Culture and Tourism to strengthen bilateral ties.

President of China Arts and Entertainment Group (CAEG) Li Jinsheng delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the 2020 Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition held in south China's Hainan province, May 20, 2021. [Photo by Xu Xiaoxuan/China.org.cn]

President of China Arts and Entertainment Group (CAEG) Li Jinsheng noted that the global artists' support for and participation in this exhibition underlined the internationalization of the event and the unity of artists in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

The exhibition will also promote cultural development and international exchanges in Hainan and thereby facilitate the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port, Li added.

After the opening ceremony, a forum was held to discuss challenges and responses regarding the arts amid the pandemic as well as artistic trends in the post-epidemic era.

The newly opened Ocean Flower Island Museum is located on Ocean Flower Island (Haihua Island in Chinese), a man-made island in Hainan province. Shaped like a petal, the artificial island was built to attract tourism through amusement parks, hotels, shopping malls, and exhibition centers.

This exhibition is co-hosted by the Evergrande Fairyland Group and the China Arts and Entertainment Group Ltd. (CAEG) and organized by the China International Exhibition Agency (CIEA).