Paintings from Chinese artist Shu Yong Photo: Courtesy of Lisa

Paintings from Chinese artist Shu Yong Photo: Courtesy of Lisa

An exhibition from Chinese artist Shu Yong in Beijing aims to offer visitors in the capital city an opportunity to see China's stories through an artistic lens. 

The Tell China's Stories exhibition at the capital city's Cultural Palace of Nationalities displays works from Shu's Everyday Painting project, in which he created a painting every day to record the events of the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020, as well as his iconic Golden Bridge on the Silk Road installation work. 

Beijing is the latest stop on the exhibition's national tour, which kicked off in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province, in June 2020. 

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the artist was determined to complete at least one painting every day to capture the realities of the pandemic in China. 

Almost everything related to the efforts to overcome the deadly virus became inspiration for his paintings, which include tributes to frontline medical workers, experts and ordinary people. 

To give people some cheer during the darkest days of the pandemic in China, the artist incorporated many of the country's greatest cultural icons such as the Great Wall of China and the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan in his landscape paintings.  

When the virus began to spread around the world, the artist began new artistic attempts to call on people to work together to fight the same enemy, like his Breathing Together series, which depicts various cultural icons, such as Vincent van Gogh and US artist Jackson Pollock, inside of a pair of human lungs.  

At the exhibition in Beijing, the artist also unveiled a new installation, Boat of A Shared Destiny, which pays tribute to the upcoming 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. The boat holds 56 sailors, representing China's 56 ethnic groups, as they sail toward the bright future.