Entering the lobby on the first floor of the CAFA Art Museum, you will be surrounded by a creative interactive field where there are no silent bystanders, only eager creators. A series of whimsical interactive works are waiting for your presence, your voice, and every leap of yours.
Hopscotch Life—An Experiential Public Art Installation Based on the "Hopscotch" Game
Author: He Siqi
Instructors: Ma Juncheng, Lu Yingying, Sun Ou, Zhang Wang
Hopscotch Life transforms the floor into a giant grid screen painted with familiar digital square patterns, inviting people to take part. Using her childhood game "hopscotch" as a starting point, He Siqi's work awakens the body's perception of memory. Jumping, as the most primitive form of physical expression, relies neither on screens nor the internet. Instead, through the contact of toes with the ground and each rise and fall, it revives emotions and growth traces buried by time. In an era dominated by algorithms and scarce attention spans, I attempt to create a "leap back to childhood" experience, allowing viewers to temporarily detach from the fast-paced digital environment and rediscover space, emotions, and themselves through physical engagement. The grids no longer serve as mere game maps but become entrances to dimensions of life—each jump is a response to the past and a rediscovery of one's own state.
Shadow Play of the Dragon Palace
Author: Cui Jiatong
Instructors: Ma Juncheng, Lu Yingying, Sun Ou, Zhang Wang
Here, you can step into a dreamlike underwater Dragon Palace and personally stage your own deep-sea adventure. Cui Jiatong's Shadow Play of the Dragon Palace focuses on the inheritance and recreation of traditional shadow puppetry in the context of contemporary digital media. Through in-depth analysis of the visual language of shadow puppetry art, classic plays, and characters from the Dragon Palace and underwater realm, combined with interactive installations and digital technology, an immersive interactive system integrating mythological imagery and modern experience is constructed, injecting new vitality into traditional intangible cultural heritage art. It breaks the limitations of traditional shadow puppetry where "audiences are mere spectators" and "performers are just performers", providing a brand-new perspective for the contemporary expression of shadow puppetry culture and responding to the practical value of integrating traditional intangible cultural heritage with contemporary media technology.
Drum Dance for Shared Joy—An Interactive Art Installation of Drum Music and Painting
Author: Huang Yike
Instructors: Ma Juncheng, Lu Yingying, Sun Ou, Zhang Wang
Drum Dance for Shared Joy by Huang Yike takes the stone carvings of the Twenty-Four Musicians from Yongling Mausoleum in Chengdu as its prototype. Integrating digital modeling, sound, and interactive design, the work responds to the fracture and regeneration of traditional musical instrument culture in the contemporary context, transforming its performance logic, structural significance, and ritual context into a tangible and participatory experiential public art language. Viewers can strike the jiegu drum with their left or right hand to awaken the musical accompaniment; when both hands drum simultaneously, the silent stone carvings instantly play in unison, resonating and dancing as if ancient sounds were revived. This is a cultural awakening across a thousand years, an immersive experience triggered by the body and guided by perception.
Ancient Rhymes in Fan Shadows
Author: Wang Ziyi
Instructors: Ma Juncheng, Sun Ou, Lu Yingying, Zhang Wang
Ancient Rhymes in Fan Shadows invites you to embody an elegant scholar, holding a fan in hand and stirring the scroll, allowing thousand-year-old charms to flow through your fingertips. Inspired by the traditional Chinese painting Scroll of Eighty-seven Immortals, Wang Ziyi's work combines dramatic viewing scenarios to create an installation art piece that fuses traditional culture with interactive experiences. Viewers participate by waving round fans: depending on the fanning frequency, the installation displays three wind speed states—breeze, moderate wind, and gale—to trigger different visual effects. For example, when fanning rapidly, an immortal in the painting "flies out" of the frame, forming a playful interactive scene. While perceiving the wind, viewers also sense the flow and connection of culture. The work attempts to awaken the audience's emotional memory of traditional cultural imagery through contemporary expressions, constructing a dialogue experience that bridges ancient and modern times as well as different media.
Yang Yang has created a digital experiential art installation - Unceasing Resonance of Vessels - based on the inheritance of Henan's "Nigugu" intangible cultural heritage. Nigugu is characterized by two small holes at the tail, which emit a pleasant "coo" sound when blown. These artworks, primarily created based on classic historical figures and animals, each contain rich cultural connotations and folk stories. Clay figures and clay horses symbolize sacrifice and remembrance, while animal shapes originate from the worship of natural creatures and life observations. The work takes "vessels" as the cultural carrier and "breath" as the interactive medium. The so-called "unceasing resonance of vessels" means that as long as human voices persist, memories will never fade. Viewers trigger the dissipation and recombination of digital Nigugu through the action of "blowing air". In the process of dissipation, visual contents of different scenes gradually emerge, such as spring swallows heralding a harvest, war images, and local folk fire performances. It creates an immersive experience about dissipation and reconstruction, breath and memory.
These immersive interactions full of childlike innocence, poetry, and stories
allow you to experience firsthand how traditional culture,
empowered by avant-garde technology,
bursts forth with awe-inspiring artistic magic.
The graduation season exhibition will close on June 22.
Don't miss it if you haven't visited yet!
Reservation Channel
2025 CAFA Graduation Season
CAFAM@ 2025
The online reservation and ticketing channel for the 2025 Graduation Season of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) is now open. Visitors can make reservations and purchase tickets through the CAFA Art Museum mini-program, WeChat official account, or official website (for ticketing instructions, please refer to the official website). The number of daily visiting slots is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. The museum will operate normally on Mondays during the graduation season.
When making a reservation, valid identification documents must be used for real-name registration. Each person can only make one reservation per day. After a successful reservation, visitors should arrive at the scheduled time. During the graduation season, please use the special ticket channel at the north gate of CAFA to enter the museum by presenting and swiping valid identification documents (such as an ID card) for verification.
Chief Editor / He Yisha
Editor / Du Yinzhu