Latest news with #ZhangXu
Vogue
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
How One Artist Is Transforming an Ancient Taiwanese Folk Craft
Alemani first encountered Zhang Xu's work last year while on an art-prize jury and was struck by his craftsmanship and detail. 'It seems quite simple, but it's actually incredibly sophisticated in the making,' she tells Vogue. 'What I loved was this balance between an almost fairy-tale atmosphere and something quite ritualistic and traditional that belongs very much to his family and country.' She found it a perfect match with MOIFA: 'There is something about folk art that feels very popular in a good way, in a way that is not too detached. I wanted that to translate in this installation—something that could be approached by kids and the usual visitors but also by contemporary-art-world people. Contemporary art can create new ways of seeing the amazing collection already there.' The boundaries between folk and contemporary art have long been fluid, from 1940s Art Brut; to feminist and conceptual artists reclaiming craft, ritual, and domestic traditions in the '60s and '70s; to the present, when museums and art fairs have fully embraced folk-informed contemporary practices. Today artists from Ai Weiwei and Nick Cave to El Anatsui, Kimsooja, and Jeffrey Gibson have drawn from or engaged with folk-art traditions. For Zhang Xu, however, 'Taiwanese ceremonial crafts were never considered art in my childhood—it was part of survival.' He admits to at times longing to escape the practice—though he's found freedom creating from his vision instead of fulfilling customer requests. Artist Zhang Xu Zhan as a child with his father and sister at their family's Taipei workshop Photos: Courtesy of the artist A large paper house and other effigies hang from the ceiling in Zhang Xu's family's kitchen. Funeral items are commonly prepared in advance so they can be sold the moment a client needs them. Photos: Courtesy of the artist 'What makes my relationship to these materials unique,' he observes, 'is that I don't treat them as fixed cultural symbols. They've been a part of my life for so long that I interact with them intuitively. I'm not looking at them from a distance but from lived experience.' For example, in Taiwan paper puppets are often displayed standing reverently at funerals. But in his home, where for storage they were tucked away in every available corner, 'they would often hang from the ceiling waiting to be sold, almost like bats. These everyday memories help me avoid cliché readings of tradition and instead find new ways of interpreting them.' Zhang Xu says that his father, who still works the family trade, doesn't quite understand his son's career—he criticizes his animals as not being realistic enough—but has heard friends mention his accolades. The artist has had several solo shows in Asia and participated in group exhibitions and film festivals there and in Europe; the High Line in New York screened his films earlier this year. He's also at work on a new film about water lanterns in different Asian traditions, from India to Vietnam, China, and Japan.
Trade Arabia
23-04-2025
- Business
- Trade Arabia
Targeted tourism policies key to inclusive growth
Targeted policies, regulatory frameworks and governance models are crucial to ensuring tourism benefits are shared by all community members, promoting social equity and inclusion, said a new report. The report by UN Tourism and the World Tourism Alliance (WTA) makes clear the multifaceted role of tourism in achieving this objective, through job creation, gender empowerment, community development, natural and cultural heritage conservation, sustainable environmental practices, education and infrastructure development. UN Tourism Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: 'Five years into the deadline to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals it is clear that progress is falling behind and many targets are at risk. Tourism, as one of the world's largest socio-economic sectors, can help shift this course — but only if we harness its full potential. "To do so, we need to put communities at the center of tourism development and implement targeted policies that make our sector a true catalyst for more inclusive, sustainable development. UN Tourism is committed to steering this transformation and ensuring the benefits of tourism are shared widely — socially, economically, and environmentally.' Zhang Xu, Chair of WTA, said: 'Countries and regions that have risen from poverty aspire to return to steady and sustainable growth. To support them we must ensure that the collective fruits of societal progress are distributed more fairly and effectively.' Recommendation for action Specific examples include China's poverty reduction through tourism policy and six village level cases from China, developed in partnership with WTA, as well as cases from Albania, Indonesia, Jordan, Peru, Rwanda and Vanuatu, with a focus on how national policies work to make tourism support shared prosperity. Recommended Actions * Place tourism as a pillar of policies aimed at promoting shared prosperity, poverty reduction, development and socioeconomic inclusion. * Ensure that tourism policies, regulatory frameworks, investment and governance create the right conditions for shared prosperity for all engaged and in host communities at large. * Utilise the income generated by tourism to reinvest in tourism sustainability and to support the wider shared-prosperity-enablers such as education, health and infrastructure in host communities and minimise any negative effects from the sector. - TradeArabia News Service
South China Morning Post
22-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China adds nearly 2 million private firms in first quarter as calls for support rise
The number of newly established private companies in China grew by 7.1 per cent in the first quarter from a year earlier, in what is being seen as a sign of resilience as the private sector bears the brunt of the fallout from the US-China trade war. Advertisement Nearly 1.98 million private firms were registered in the first three months of the year – a growth pace higher than the average in the past three years, China's top market regulator announced on Monday. This reflects the 'strong resilience' of China's private economy, the State Administration for Market Regulation said, though it did not disclose numbers on closures and bankruptcy. In total, there were more than 57 million registered private enterprises nationwide as of the end of March, accounting for 92.3 per cent of all enterprises, according to the administration. China's private businesses are expected to be hit hard by the up-to 245 per cent tariffs that the US says it has imposed on China, as those firms contribute to more than half of the country's exports. Advertisement They reported an export and import value of 5.85 trillion yuan (US$803 billion) in the first quarter, up 5.8 per cent, year on year, Chinese customs data showed. They also accounted for 56.8 per cent of the total trade value in the period – an increase of 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier. 'Compared with state-owned enterprises, private and small businesses are more vulnerable to US 'reciprocal tariffs',' Zhang Xu, an analyst with Everbright Securities, wrote in a note in early April.
