The Via Combusta, which scooped the third Jimei x Arles Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image in December 2023, kicked off on Friday at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing.

Co-curated by Gan Yingying and Zhou Yichen, who are also photographers, the exhibition debuted at Fotografiska Shanghai in March with the support of the award, founded in 2021 in collaboration with the art center and French fashion house Chanel.

The exhibition's title is an astrological term meaning "the way of fire", a segment of the zodiac where neither the sun nor the moon shines and numerous malefic fixed stars are located, making planets that fall into this part vicious and destructive.

"The title is a metaphor for the anxiety experienced by the artist community and beyond in an era where fast technological development fails to alleviate humankind's anxiety but exacerbates it," Zhou told the China Daily website, adding that the Via Combusta is also a symbol of fire, an ancient form of technology that Prometheus stole from Mount Olympus and gifted to humankind anguishing in darkness enabling humans to survive and thrive by using fire to achieve countless technological advancements.

The creative duo observed that, in the last few years, anxiety has enveloped their communities. "COVID-19 either canceled or postponed many exhibition projects, throwing everything in limbo and making artists more financially precarious and the rapid development of artificial intelligence also impacted artistic creations, worrying many artists about being made redundant," Zhou said.

The two friends thus developed the idea to curate an exhibit exploring how contemporary artists deal with their anxiety.

They each suggested four relevant artists whom they know personally or through friends and then started researching their work and lives. Through interviews and in-person visits, they found that those artists, though from different backgrounds, had shockingly similar answers to questions such as how to balance making a living and art creation, how to deal with a plethora of information every day, and how to tackle the pressure caused by social media.

"We saw an inherent connection among the work of those artists faced with a similar predicament in today's globalized world and they try to navigate their predicament by resorting to either modern technology or invisible spiritual forces," Gan said.

For example, in video installation Pyramids and Parabolas II, artist Alice Wang invited the audience to join her in the process of building geometrical devices for communicating with the universe. In Skin Series, artist Vivian Xu designed wearable equipment that enables the wearer to sense how animals such as bats and whales perceive the environment.

In Spanish photographer Yurian Quintanas Nobel's series Dream Moons, the artist photographed the spaces, domestic objects and the inhabitants of his house, exploring the invisible and poetic side in his closest environment. The documentary Shaman Map II On the Road by Chinese filmmaker Gu Tao chronicled the artist's quest for shamans who possess the ability to connect the spiritual world and the physical world in northern China after the death of the oldest female shaman in the Oroqen ethnic group.

The curators designed the floor of the exhibition space as a flowing river that explores the possibility of human beings as a medium connecting both technology and human spirit.

On view at the Beijing show are also the results of the workshop "The Eagle Dream of Madame Darget" during the exhibition's first leg in Shanghai. The curators invited five local emerging artists Yan Jialin, Zhu Junqiao, Liu Yikun, Gao Kang and Zhang Yilin. Their works also explore the relationship between technology and invisible forces, forming a growing conversation inspired by the curatorial project.

A screening of the works by the participating artists Gu Tao and Yurian Quintanas Nobel was held on the exhibition's opening day. The curators also hosted a panel talk themed on "Image Technology and the Production of Illusion" on Saturday, featuring photography historian He Yining, science fiction writer Tang Fei, and participating artists Nobel and Wang.

The open call for the fourth edition of the Jimei x Arles Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image will kick off in June 2024, continuing to cultivate Chinese curators in the field of imagery and providing them with opportunities to showcase their work, according to the Three Shadows.

The Via Combusta, together with Untied Boat, a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Yin Yunya, runs through June 16.

If you go:

10 am-6 pm, closed on Mondays. Three Shadows Photography Art Center, 155 A Caochangdi, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-6432-2663