The thousand year old kiln fire echoes along the Silk Road: Jiangxi invites you to visit "Dunhuang in Glaze Colors" together
Blessings on the New Year, welcoming spring in Ganpo; The cultural context flows and the venue is rejuvenated.
Jiangxi Provincial Museum, Provincial Art Museum, Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Center, and Provincial Academy of Painting jointly present a heavyweight exhibition: Huang Tingjian's ink charm is passed down, Huang Zhou's century old painting, intangible cultural heritage illuminates life, and the beauty of art is also subtle.
We have specially opened a column titled 'Celebrating the New Year and Watching Major Exhibitions', interpreting exquisite exhibitions one by one, taking you to appreciate the fragrance of books, appreciate the beauty of life, and observe intangible cultural heritage. Enjoy the auspicious New Year in a cultural feast and feel the charm of Jiangxi in the millennium inheritance.
Camel bells ring along the road, echoing the Dunhuang legacy; A thousand year old kiln fire, quietly appreciating the elegance on porcelain.
Dunhuang, a civilization monument standing for thousands of years in the wind and sand of the Silk Road, has become an insurmountable peak in the history of world art with its stunning murals and sculptures. When the millennium charm of Mogao Grottoes meets the millennium kiln fire, a timeless artistic dialogue quietly begins at this moment. At the time of deepening cultural exchanges under the Belt and Road Initiative, this Spring Festival, Jiangxi Provincial Art Museum launched a special exhibition titled "Looking Back at the Silk Road, China on Porcelain - Dunhuang in Glaze Colors". The exhibition is jointly organized by the Department of Culture and Tourism of Jiangxi Province, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Gansu Province, and the Dunhuang Academy. Since its launch, the number of visitors has reached over 380000; After more than a month of development, it has been selected as one of the top 100 popular exhibitions in national art museums in 2025. This is also the first time that an exhibition independently planned by Jiangxi Provincial Art Museum has been included in this national list.
The exhibition is based on the dual genes of Dunhuang art and ceramic culture, gathering multiple overseas copied works, official replica caves, and contemporary innovative installations, systematically presenting the eternal charm of Dunhuang aesthetics and the contemporary transformation of ceramic craftsmanship, intuitively reproducing the magnificent scene of the Silk Road civilization, and highlighting the spirit of Chinese civilization's inclusiveness and endless vitality.
The exhibition focuses on two major chapters: "Desert Porcelain Sound" and "Silk Road Harmony", inviting you to a visual and cultural feast together:
Desert Porcelain Sound - A Millennium Narrative of Silk Road Porcelain Connection
Using ceramics as a pen, rewrite the story of Dunhuang. High temperature color glazed porcelain plate painting solidifies the colorful mineral colors of mural paintings on porcelain, and traditional crafts such as blue and white, multicolored, and doucai are revitalized in their own stories, as well as in the stories of traditional paintings.
Dunhuang, a thousand year old Mogao, showcases a grotto art that combines traditional Chinese painting and sculpture techniques with aesthetic taste, inspired by the replication of colored sculptures from Cave 328 of Mogao Grottoes. In the holy realm of Buddha with lowered eyebrows, Bodhisattva smiling, and flying clothes, the audience can immerse themselves in the magnificence and splendor of Dunhuang art. The official reproduction cave of Cave 328 of the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang (including 8 original scale reproduction colored sculptures) spans thousands of miles and is exhibited for the first time in Jiangxi, so that the audience can experience the holy land of Buddhism in person without going to the desert.
Multiple copies of Dunhuang murals that have been lost overseas have gathered and appeared for the first time in China, recreating the complete style of Dunhuang art in the past.
Two Dunhuang porcelain cave installations made with high-temperature color glaze technology have made a stunning debut in China for the first time by innovatively transforming the murals into three dimensions. The porcelain cave installation breaks the boundaries between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the perfect blend of mural texture and glaze color flow. The porcelain cave uses high-temperature colored glaze and contemporary ceramic craftsmanship to transform the two-dimensional Dunhuang murals into a three-dimensional art space that can be walked in and perceived.
Silk Road Harmony - Civilization Integration on the Ceramic Road
Chapter 2 takes the broader Silk Road civilization as the narrative background, presenting the creative response of contemporary ceramic art to the millennium cultural exchange along the dual veins of the land and sea Silk Road. Art creators are no longer limited to copying traditional patterns, but instead engage in a cross-cultural dialogue through more conceptual expressions.
Artists from both domestic and international backgrounds extract nutrients from Dunhuang mineral colors, Western Regions elements, and blue and blue waves, infusing memories of the Silk Road into contemporary ceramic language.
With the core of "Silk Road Legend: Blue and White Plate", which has won the title of "Guinness World's Best", it connects the trade scenes of the world's eight major porcelain producing regions and reproduces the glorious history of Jingdezhen porcelain's "becoming the world's most famous porcelain" journey.
Blue and white porcelain is the foremost of the four famous porcelain brands in Jingdezhen, serving as a symbol of external image and showcasing national culture. The work revolves around the narrative themes of "Maritime Silk Road" and "Zheng He's voyages to the West". With Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Factory as the core scene, the panel center carefully depicts the historical symbols such as Longzhu Pavilion, Xujia Kiln firewood kiln site, craftsman porcelain making scene and Zheng He's fleet. The traditional blue and white wutong landscape techniques are used to convey the profound ceramic culture. The layout of windows around the panel connects the ceramic history stories of the world's major porcelain producing areas. The border decoration cleverly integrates the national flower patterns of the eight major porcelain producing areas, and is supplemented by traditional Chinese auspicious patterns such as the Fangsheng pattern and the Dark Eight Immortals. The overall blue and white contrast, with a grand and exquisite composition, is not only a tribute to Jingdezhen ceramic craftsmanship, but also a "world ceramic civilization scroll" painted in blue and white language.
Ceramic sculptures, installations, and abstract porcelain paintings, with camel caravans, grottoes, and cofferdams as imagery, play the contemporary chord of Silk Road civilization.
The "Dunhuang in Glaze Colors" exhibition is not only an artistic presentation, but also a groundbreaking cultural practice, bringing unprecedented viewing experience to the audience. The exhibition breaks through the boundaries of time and space through scene restoration, visual creation, and interactive design, creating an aesthetic experience of "time and space folding" between the exhibition halls, revitalizing Dunhuang art and ceramic art through collision, and providing a new coordinate system for contemporary art creation.
Jiangxi has been a fertile ground for ceramic art since ancient times. From celadon from Hongzhou kiln, black glaze from Jizhou kiln, to Jingdezhen's reputation as the "Porcelain Capital", Jiangxi ceramics have become a global cultural symbol spanning thousands of years with outstanding practical aesthetics. This exhibition is an important part of the "China on Porcelain" series of Jiangxi Provincial Art Museum, and also a new attempt to tell the story of China to the world. Looking forward to using exhibitions as a medium to promote the revitalization of ceramic art in the context of the new era, so that the echoes of Silk Road civilization can be sustainably passed down in glaze colors.