2021 Arles in Shanghai

Rediscovery: A Selection of Jimei x Arles Discovery Awards

Created in 2015, the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival has become an unmissable event in China every autumn. In exhibitions that forge links between Arles and Jimei, Rong Rong, photographer and co-founder of the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, and Sam Stourdzé, then director of the Rencontres d'Arles, have supported contemporary artists by fostering synergies. The Discovery Awards are the most beautiful expression of this by making support for young talents and their curators a priority.

In this context, in 2021 we’ve decided to create a high-profile event in Shanghai to showcase a selection of seven projects by recent winners of the Jimei x Arles Women Photographers Award and the Jimei x Arles Discovery Award.

The selection features various approaches combining photography with film or installations that tackle the themes of young people’s private worlds and a more social and political approach to the world.

The following artists are presented: Guo Yingguang (The Bliss of Conformity, curated by He Yining) ; Lei Lei (Cinema Romance in Lushan, curated by Victoria Jonathan and Bérénice Angrémy, with the complicity of Dong Bingfeng) ; Luo Yang (Youth, curated by Victoria Jonathan and Bérénice Angrémy) ; Yi Lian (Ask for the Moon, curated by Cai Liyuan) ; Pixy Liao (An Experimental Relationship, curated by Holly Roussell) ; Feng Li (White Night, curated by Thomas Sauvin); and Sim Chi Yin (The Shifting Sand, curated by Liu Xiao).

Text by Christoph Wiesner, director of Les Rencontres d’Arles