Audience look at an artwork at the exhibition. Photo: Yin Yeping/GT

The 8th Beijing International Art Biennale A Colorful World and A Shared Future is being held at the National Art Museum of China from August 30 to September 20. The exhibition showcases 640 works by 595 artists from 113 countries in five continents, and includes paintings, engravings, comprehensive materials, sculptures, and installations. In addition to the theme exhibition, the Beijing biennale is also holding six special exhibitions of contemporary art from Belarus, South Korea, New Zealand, Spain, SCO countries, and Latin American countries.

At the opening ceremony on the 30th, government officials, ambassadors, representatives, artists and media groups attended the event to get a closer look at art from around the world.

The Mexican Ambassador to China Jose Luis Bernal Rodriguez was at the event, and said that the artworks of six Mexican artists are on display at the exhibition. "What is more important for them is to showcase their new works and also project how these cultural communications are done," Bernal said. "All of the artists are expressing different state of mind with the philosophies of how people can get closer together."

The Peruvian Ambassador to China Luis Quesada said that the exhibition helps to boost people-to-people exchanges in understanding arts as well as other fields. "Like China, Peru has a long history and tradition of arts. I think the Chinese audience can enjoy different perspectives that our artists have and about what they want to express in the lives of their own society," Quesada said. Midnight Dance by Peruvian artist Rember Yahuarcani is a typical art piece from aboriginal culture. The artist wanted to show the 'spirit of Amazon' through his painting. "Amazon itself is very religious. I try to bring about the philosophical ideas of who we are and where we are going to from the point of view of Amazon's aborigines instead of from the West," Yahuarcani said.

Gabriel Sánchez Viveros, an artist from Mexico, brought a special artwork to the exhibition - Flora's Soul, one of his most recent collections that consists of stamps and paintings made with natural pigments extracted from flowers and printed on handmade paper. "I want to tell audience via my artwork that we'd better take care of our nature because human beings cannot be alive without nature," Sánchez Viveros said.