BENTU CHINESE ARTISTS IN A TIME OF TURBULENCE AND TRANSFORMATION: Fondation Louis Vuitton

This exhibition will present a limited selection of twelve very di erent artists, twelve strong individualities. They share not only the ability to live and work in what is a particularly fast-moving world of “turbulence and transformation,” but also a tendency to use multiple means of expression, combining tools supplied by local traditions with the latest sophisticated technologies.Responding with striking swi ness, their work mirrors the new realities of today’s China, as manifested in the economy, the environment, cities and international relations, showing a strong awareness of the changing relations between town and country a er the great rural exodus.

The term chosen for the exhibition title, bentu, meaning native soil, is at the heart of their concerns and of the ideas being explored by contemporary Chinese critics and researchers (see the text by the two curators in the catalogue). In this specific context, bentu evokes the way in which artists have discovered and found their place in countries around the world, the better to return to their “homeland” with a strengthened sense of self.