As each year Jimei x Arles festival invited five young curators to choose and curate the works of two young Chinese photography talents. Selected by a jury composed of Sam Stourdzé, Bérénice Angremy, Inri, Charles Jin and Wang Huangsheng, the winner was awarded a 200,000 RMB prize and a three-months exhibition in 2018 Rencontres d’Arles.
Amongst the 2017 participants were the Chinese curator He Yining who introduced Guo Yingguang and Jiang Yuxin; the Chinese curator Liu Tian who introduced Shao Wenhuan and Yu Mo; the Chinese curator Nie Xiaoyi who introduced Deng Yun, and the Real; the French curator Thomas Sauvin who introduced Feng Li and Sun Yanchu; and finally the Chinese curator Tang Zehui who introduced Siu Wai Hang and Yu Feifei.
On Saturday 25th November 2017 evening, we were all very pleased to learn that the Chinese photographer FENG LI won the Discovery award, while SIU WAI HANG received a Special Mention from the jury members. Feng Li is “the man of one series, White Night, which he has worked on for more than 10 years,” explained Thomas Sauvin. “All his talent, flair, and technique, are deployed in one and the same work, intimately tied to his daily life. If some practice photography as if it were like hunting, one can say that Feng Li practices it more like calligraphy or morning taichi. Like a sportsman or musician who repeats a movement 100 or 1000 times, Feng Li takes daily pictures in Chengdu. Skilled at shooting very intuitive street photos, he wanders the city, delicately capturing the city's human fauna in all its incredible postures.”
Madame Figaro is a French magazine supplement to the Saturday edition of the daily newspaper Le Figaro, focusing on and catering to women. For the past 37 years, the world's best photographers have collaborated with the magazine, and not only for fashion series.
Initiated in 2016 in Rencontres d'Arles, the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro – Arles rewards every year a woman photographer, whose work is shown in the festival. In 2017, the Chinese edition of Madame Figaro has launched a new formula: the Jimei x Arles - Madame Figaro Women Photographers Award, which honours the work of a Chinese woman photographer exhibited at Jimei x Arles.
All media partners were invited to the beautifully designed Wind Hotel 无垠酒店 on Sunday 26th November evening to hear speeches by the jury members, namely Sam Stourdzé, Rong Rong, Anais Martane-Liu [photographer], Ms Min [Xiamen-based fashion designer], and Jean-Sébastien Stehli [chief editor of Madame Figaro France]. They eventually nominated GUO YINGGUANG as the laureate, which means she was awarded 50,000 RMB and the opportunity to shoot a photo series for Madame Figaro China.
Guo exhibited at Jimei her series “The Bliss of Conformity”, which is a photography-based mixed-media series combining elements of video, installation and artist’s book. In this work, Guo explored arranged marriages in China and the emotionally distant coexistence between arranged couples from both abstract and concrete viewpoints. She began her photographic career with Reuters, China Daily, and other media groups. Moving on to the artistic world, her creations revolve around social problems in contemporary China. Her combination of photography and printmaking aims for melancholia, delicacy, and abstraction.
More information: www.threeshadows.cn/jimei-arles
