Authentic beauty

Beijing Fine Art Academy has in its collection several works that are considered iconic in the depiction of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, such as A Harvest of Delight in which late painter Huang Zhou (1925-97) drew a vivid harvest scene of singing and dancing.

In September, resident painters of Beijing Fine Art Academy traveled to Kashgar prefecture, Xinjiang, for sketching. The 12-day trip exposed them to the panoramic views of the Pamir Plateau, the primitive beauty of ancient residential compounds and booming bazaars.

Paintings from this trip are now on show at Self-cultivation in Art, running at the Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy until Jan 12.The exhibition takes the audience on a journey to the embrace of nature and the crisscross of cultures along the ancient Silk Road.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 12 Chaoyang Gongyuan Nanlu, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-6502-5171.

Poetry in art

Ocean on Paper, an exhibition at Gravity Art Museum until Feb 16, shows dozens of works that resulted from collaboration between printmaking artists and poets. The cross-disciplinary presentation also opens up a cross-border dialogue — participants are from home and Europe — on emotions, imagination and identity.

In a digital age when fragmented reading is favored, the texts on show allow people a moment of slow, deep reading of the underlying mood and rich feelings between the lines. Artists have visualized these unsaid emotions into combinations of surfaces, lines and colors. It offers dual experiences of the strength of words and the poetic hues of art.

10 am-5:30 pm, closed on Mondays. Huahengboyuan Design Industrial Park, 57 Wujiacun Lu, Shijingshan district, Beijing. 010-5365-3265.

Meeting point

After touring Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and Macao, dozens of oil paintings and maps that offer a view of the landscapes and social life of Guangdong and Macao in the 19th century have returned to their home, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. They continue to be on show at a longtime exhibition, The Meeting of Chinese and Western Art.

The paintings — oil works, watercolors and gouaches — were made by European painters who traveled to live in Guangzhou and their Chinese students. It was a cultural product of the exchanges between the East and the West, prompted by the Maritime Silk Road and the sea routes of the Age of Discovery.

These paintings show booming trading scenes at major ports of southern China back then. Other revisited motifs include Chinese gardens and courtyards, as well as the daily life of their owners.

10 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays.12 Hele Lu, Xingqing district, Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region. 0951-8426-111.