The China Pavilion exhibition Dream Stream of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is on view at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, from 8 May to 22 November 2026 (local time). Echoing the Biennale's overarching theme, "In Minor Keys" the exhibition adopts Dream Stream as its thematic framework. Centered on the creative transformation and innovative development of China's rich traditional cultural heritage, the exhibition explores art-science integration as its primary mode of expression. Through diverse artistic approaches, it responds to the theme of Dream Stream and creates a cross-cultural artistic landscape.
The Art Museum of China Academy of Art will launch the special interview series on the China Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia. Structured around the curatorial vision, the series is divided into some sections: Forging Ancient and Contemporary, Connecting China and the World, Intertextual Dialogue, and Moments of Highlight. Beyond these thematic sections, the series also focus on the latest creative practices of emerging artists.The series seeks to explore the artists' creative processes, personal reflections, and artistic inquiries underlying their participation in the Biennale. It will progressively present the exhibition's exploration of artistic innovation, as well as the enduring contemporary vitality of Chinese cultural traditions.
Connecting China and the World / Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci
Wu Ziyang
"When perfect proportions no longer work，how do we deal with it？"
Interview
Q1：Could you introduce your work Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci?
Wu Ziyang：
Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci is like a science fiction artwork. We set the entire narrative in the distant era of Web 4.0. In a future where AI and algorithms may completely dominate the world, how can humanity find a way in? We invited Da Vinci and Shen Kuo to confront and face this prospective future together.
At first, we considered how to connect the creativity of these two thinkers. Shen Kuo was one of the earliest to observe pinhole imaging, and Leonardo similarly discovered related effects in his studies. We brought them together once we found this distant similarity, a connection that was not originally present between the two civilizations.
Ultimately, we found a very small entry point. Like The Vitruvian Man, it represents the perfect human proportions defined by squares and circles in Western tradition. His muscles begin to ache, and his hands seem pulled by an invisible magnetic field. The form can no longer sustain those ideal proportions. The subtle magnetic deflection he detects is precisely the magnetic phenomenon observed by Shen Kuo.
This leads us to Shen Kuo, who was the first to observe magnetic declination. To put it simply, people traditionally believe geographic poles match magnetic poles exactly.Yet Shen Kuo was the first to detect their three‑degree deviation: the geomagnetic south and north poles do not align perfectly with true south and true north. The ideal, perfect square‑circle proportions conceived in traditional thought simply do not exist in reality.
In terms of approach, we initially experimented with 3D modeling and AI-generated content. At the same time, we tested and experimented with many related tools. We achieved fairly comprehensive results in a relatively short period of time with a relatively small team.
Q2:Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci underwent countless revisions throughout its creation, and the entire development process stretched out over a long period. Could you walk us through the changes made across these multiple rounds of adjustments, and explain how you approached the process of adding and cutting content during production?
Wu Ziyang：
The full creation cycle spanned roughly four to five months. During the early stages, we packed extensive research material into the work. Leonardo da Vinci drew parallels between landscapes and the human body—for instance, likening blood vessels to rivers, among other analogies. After layering in all this content, we realized the piece lacked a cohesive identity, coming across as disjointed and unfocused. Our initial edit clocked in at nearly fifteen minutes.
We later crossed paths with Roger M. Bürgel, artistic director of the 12th Kassel Documenta. On his first visit, he came to Building 20 on the Xiangshan Campus to view our rough-cut preview. He watched the draft all the way through with great focus, then raised a key question: what was the core focal point of this artwork? It seemed we were trying to cover far too many themes at once.
He also offered grounded, practical feedback. He believes no one would commit to watching a 15-minute film amid a packed group exhibition. Following that observation, he put forward what he called the "ping-pong" approach: abandon rigid linear storytelling, and instead split the footage into a series of extremely short micro-clips, each running 15 or 30 seconds long. Distant, direct or indirect thematic threads would link these separate short segments together. We took his insight onboard and embarked on extensive editing cuts, ultimately condensing the full work down to a three-minute film.
This aligns closely with how we normally experience creation. It's similar to painting: you build up layers upon layers. Then at a certain point, nothing feels right anymore—so you scrape everything back down to a blank white canvas and start from scratch. That's exactly what this project was like for me.
Creators like us must earnestly confront moments of uncertainty and unintended divergence as they arise. We also need the courage to cut out all bloated, meandering content without hesitation.
Q3：In this uncertain AI era, how can creators achieve innovation on an artistic level? Where do your latest relevant interests lie?
Wu Ziyang：
We didn’t encounter any major difficulties with AI; on the contrary, we were able to take full advantage of its benefits. At the same time, quality control remained very effective, and overall, it really helped us a lot.
Take my recent personal interest as an example: I'm deeply engaged with vibe coding, and I even teach courses on the subject. In the past, any creative work of this kind demanded extensive coding expertise. Today, however, you can program directly using plain natural language to bring your ideas to life. To give a simple illustration: I'm fond of net art and wanted to build a Chrome extension. All I needed to do was describe the functionality I wanted in natural language, and the AI generated a working version in roughly thirty minutes. It lets us cross technical thresholds that once felt completely out of reach, enabling uniquely novel web browsing experiences for users.
AI boasts a broad set of capabilities, acting much like an all-powerful assistant. During roundtable talks or brainstorming sessions, for instance, you can assign distinct personas to the AI agents and task them with discussing a central theme. Each persona delivers perspectives from separate vantage points, yielding solid, well-rounded conclusions within half an hour. Importantly, AI's role extends far beyond merely generating final outputs—it integrates seamlessly into every dimension, segment and stage of creation. Its contributions often operate behind the scenes, yet they fundamentally underpin and fuel innovative thinking.
Q4：Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci was co-created with Crude_Castin, a collective of young artists. Could you talk us through the collaborative process?
Wu Ziyang：
This small collaborative team consists entirely of my former students from the School of Innovative Design. After finishing their undergraduate studies, some pursued postgraduate education in the UK, some in Germany, and others in Japan.
I initially reached out to them back in 2023, when I curated an international segment of the cross-media art festival Proposal to Leonardo da Vinci. I commissioned them to create an artwork for the event. During that project, they poured tremendous effort into their creation and extensively studied Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts. They reimagined the flying machines depicted in those notebooks and placed them within a wide range of distinct spatial contexts, a body of work that left a profound impression on me. When I revisited this project in 2026, this team immediately came to mind as my first choice for collaboration.
Our workflow relied heavily on online meetings, during which we revised written scripts, refined 3D models, and polished voiceover recordings. Since all team members worked remotely without in-person physical interaction, miscommunication occasionally arose amid our exchanges, compounded by logistical hurdles such as time zone differences. Even so, the overall collaboration proceeded rather smoothly.
Q5：What impact has participating in 61st La Biennale di Venezia had on your subsequent artistic creation and daily life?
Wu Ziyang：
So far, personally, it hasn't had much of an impact on me; I'm basically still working on the creative projects I've always been doing and continuing to stick to my creative philosophy. I spent a lot of time exploring the themed pavilions, which brought me back to the theme of "In Minor Keys" Two highly prominent mediums stood out formally: textile and clay. Rooted deeply in traditional craftsmanship and folk culture, both are inherently handcrafted. Within the broader contemporary art landscape, they signal a widespread urge to return to the physical, embodied human experience.
I have gradually lost enthusiasm for purely research-driven artworks and no longer feel drawn to creating them. I have come to realise that my greatest strength as an artist lies in subjects I have lived through firsthand.
Meaningful, unexpected breakthroughs often emerge from real-life encounters—conversations, sharing drinks, even occasional friction with other people. Today, we are saturated with research-based art and over-intellectualised speculative design, much of which fails to pose genuine, urgent questions. By contrast, work rooted in physical, embodied sensation resonates universally with every viewer.
采访视频.mp4
