A contemporary art exhibition themed "Blooming Echoes" is being held at the Times Art Museum in Beijing. The exhibition combines various cutting-edge art forms such as sound art, interactive techniques and immersive audio-visual spaces, offering a unique sound and art experience to visitors.

Eleven contemporary artists have created fourteen artistic installations forming three thematic units for this exhibition – "Sound Inspiration," "Sound Rhyme" and "Sound Vibration," – conveying the relationship between sound and life, and presenting how sound can transcend an individual's life.

Artists have traveled to southwest China's Guizhou Province and collected fragments of the local languages, music and songs to present local culture through art for the exhibition.

"During our field trip, we found that there were no written papers related to the local ethnic culture, but everything was passed down orally. So we chose to use sound as a way to interpret and express life there. We aimed to present ethnic culture in a format that audiences could understand – that is, through contemporary art. It allows young people to gain an insight into the traditional cultures of China and appreciate the value of inheriting and carrying forward ethnic cultures," said Wang Guanzhou, the director of the exhibition.

The museum launched a project to explore ethnic cultures from different regions of China and to protect local culture. For example, Wang highlighted one immersive audio-visual artwork at the exhibition. Co-produced by artist Zhao Yan, visual artist Liu Haofan and sound artist Xiao He, this artwork shows the original voices of the ethnic minorities in Guizhou through visual art.

Paper artist Chen Fenwan also presented her new work "Paper-Cut Universe," which expands on the paper-cut patterns she has created over the past ten years through the concept of "trees."

"Paper is the material I always use, so it's the starting point for my thinking. Creating paper-cuts is about the art of making choices. Subtract some paper to leave the rest. That was my initial idea for this work. The paper cuts on display are the positive shapes that I cut with scissors, while the real paper-cut universe is actually the negative shapes that are discarded," she shared.

The exhibition will run until February 27, 2023. It offers visitors an artistic world full of sound to convey creative ideas, share the meaning of life and cultural heritage in China, and highlight the importance of an individual's "inner sound."