The exhibition Photo: Courtesy of the Yishu 8 Maison des Arts

An art exhibition named Kisses from Beijing kicked off at the Guimet Museum in Paris on Wednesday, bringing together 20 Chinese and French artists and their works to show one facet of the exchanges between the two countries.

The exhibition is being hosted by the Yishu 8 Maison des Arts in Beijing, a platform for Chinese-French creation and influence whose vocation is to strengthen art relations by giving young French and Chinese artists the opportunity to immerse themselves in their mutual artistic worlds.

Most of the artists involved in the exhibition have previously won the Yishu 8 Contemporary Art Prize.

When walking into the exhibition hall, the first artwork visitors will see is a statue created by French artist Lionel Sabatté using bronze, paraffin and silk fabric.

Chinese artist Wang Enlai's work, a mobile blue wind ball hanging on a white wall, also appears at the exhibition. Inspired by skylights, Wang hoped to introduce the blue sky, flowing air and natural sounds into the museum through this art installation.

Within the rooms of the China collection on the 2nd floor of the exhibition, winners of the Yishu 8 Prize were invited to choose an object "in resonance" with their approach, then to write postcards to other artists containing a few sentences or a pictorial gesture that reveals the way in which this object "speaks" to the artist. 

These cards are part of the showcases of the museum, offering an allusive means to reveal artists' poetic attachment to certain objects from the museum collection. It is a memorial gesture that brings together the history of the object and the memory of the artist, an encounter that the Chinese call yuanfen (destiny) and which designates a selective affinity decided by Heaven.

Lu Shaye, Chinese ambassador to France, sent in a video clip at the opening ceremony of the exhibition to congratulate the artists.

Christine Cayol, founder of the art organization, said that the organization is like a key that helps Chinese and French artists and art lovers open a door to understand another mysterious culture thousands of miles away.

According to the host, the exhibition is part of cultural activities that make it possible to establish a bridge between the Western contemporary spirit and Chinese tradition.

The museum has one of the world's richest collections of Asian art, and the Chinese section contains about 20,000 objects, covering 7,000 years of Chinese art from the origins of the civilization to around the 18th century.

The exhibition is set to run until February 2023.