Pao student reporter: Jackie He ( Y10 )
The Tianzifang neighbourhood near Sinan Road is one of the few areas in Shanghai where traditional Shanghainese shikumen residences remain. Rich in historical charm, it is an ideal place to showcase the works of Pao School’s young artists.
The organizers of this exhibition are five Pao students: Ge Xinyue, Yang Feini, Wang Muyao, Yuan Yifan and Zhang Anqi.
Pick up your head and see the world
The theme of the exhibition is ‘Pick up your head and see the world’. The students were inspired to create this exhibition to highlight the problem of smartphone addiction. Everywhere we look, people are engaged with their handsets rather than each other. This creates distance between people. And when people focus on their smartphones, they miss the opportunity to see real beauty in the world.
The students spent a year working on the exhibition. Given the heavy workload of Year 10 students, it was a challenge for them to find time for the exhibition, but they ultimately persevered.
The students scouted out many locations before deciding on Tianzifang, which is a popular pedestrian area frequented by both tourists and Shanghai residents. They compiled an impressive exhibition featuring 36 paintings, 70 photographs and 6 sculptures. ‘The most challenging part of the project was compiling all the individual works in a way that they expressed a common theme,’ says Ge Xinyue.
During the final two days of the exhibition, which were working days, visitor numbers fell. It also was not easy for some people to find the exhibition as it was located on the second floor of a building. To solve the problem, the students decided to create an impromptu work of art that would attract the attention of passers-by: They hung a poster in the building entrance on the first floor. This turned out to be a wise decision, as more passers-by stopped to look at the poster and decided to visit the exhibition on the second floor.
Pao School’s young artists created a wide variety of works for their exhibition. Some of the paintings were abstract, while others were done in more of a realist style. One painting by Zhang Anqi is especially notable. She let children freely paint on the canvas without any instruction, and then she added her own blocks and lines of colour. This work expresses the purity of a child’s mind.
Overall, the exhibition was a resounding success. It attracted more than 10,000 visitors, mainly young people or travellers with kids. The exhibition also was successful as a charity fund-raising event. The students donated 51,000 yuan that they raised from the exhibition to a school in Guizhou in need of financial support.
