Bambú y Jardín: El Arte de Encontrarse

The exhibition Bamboo and Garden: The Art of Encountering, open from 17 September to 7 November at the China Cultural Centre in Madrid, brings together works by twenty Chinese artists centred around two fundamental imagery motifs in Chinese culture: the bamboo and the garden. Through various artistic languages and practices, the exhibition explores how these motifs, linked to memory and tradition, acquire new meanings from a contemporary sensibility.

Throughout the history of Chinese art, bamboo represents values such as integrity, sobriety, resilience and inner freedom. The garden, for its part, transcends the representation of nature to become a way of constructing, contemplating and experiencing it. Both elements shape a shared cultural and aesthetic universe in which the natural and the constructed, the visible and the suggested, identity, time and human experience all enter into dialogue.

The exhibition is divided into the sections New Interpretations of Bamboo and Reconstruction of the Garden Language, each comprising ten works. Oil painting, ink, sculpture and moving image coexist along a route that connects different generations, sensibilities and languages. The pieces retain features associated with the aesthetics of bamboo and the garden, such as serenity, sobriety, subtlety and attentiveness towards nature, whilst also reflecting the freedom with which their artists reinterpret this cultural heritage.

Rather than showcasing an unchanging tradition, Bamboo and Garden: The Art of Encountering transforms it into a territory open to new questions, images and forms of perception. The exhibition is organised by the China Cultural Centre in Madrid and the National Art Museum of China, with the support of the China International Culture Association and the Bank of China as global strategic partner.