NAO  NOW

    NAO NOW项目同时集合了九位国际知名的墨西哥现代艺术家，并将在虚苑文化艺术发展有限公司进行为时两个月的艺术创作，艺术家们将采用混合创作技法共同创作一辑版画收藏品。

    NAO NOW 的名字来源于新西班牙时期中国与墨西哥交易路线的名字 “La Nao de China”，中文称之为 ‘中国的商船’。该项目主体词一语双关，NAO的本意是运送商品的船，NOW 为英文‘现在’的意思，发音与中文‘脑脑’相似，艺术家们则使用‘脑脑’来形容中国与墨西哥两个国家之间智慧和文化的交流。项目就是以这种方式开启中国与墨西哥之间文化交流的旅程，寻求一条中墨艺术之路。

    此项目的策展人，巴勃罗·J·里科言：

    “9位墨西哥艺术家受北京虚苑的邀请，为恢复与再创造中墨两国文化与艺术间的联系，踏上了这次独特的具创造性的“冒险”。中国与墨西哥都是有着悠久历史与灿烂现代文化的大国。几百年来，中国的“Nao” 承载了远东与新西班牙持续的文化与经济交流；现在，“Nao Now” 也继承了这一使命，在一个高度全球化的、专注于贸易和经济的世界里，坚定的寻回艺术与文化的价值。”

Nao Now brings together the work of nine internationally recognised MexicanContemporary Artists who will work for two months at the Xu Yuan PrintmakingCentre in Beijing to create a folder of mixed media prints.

The title of the project itself “NAO NOW”takes the name of the trade route between Mexico and China that existed in theera of New Spain and was known as “La Nao de China”. The project title is aword-play on ‘nao’ which was the type of boat used by the merchants, and ‘now’which in English refers to the Present. The phonetic repetition ‘nao now’ inChinese sounds like ‘brain-brain’ and refers to the intellectual and culturalexchange between two countries. In this way, the project seeks to reinterpretthe meaning of this trade route transforming it into a route of culturalexchange that can open new links between China and Mexico.

The curator of the Nao Now project, Pablo J.Rico writes:

“Invited by the XuYuan in Beijing, nine Mexican artists on a unique and creative adventure inChina aim to restore and reinvent the cultural and aristic connections betweentwo great historical and contemporary realities in the Pacific area: Mexico andChina. If for centuries ‘the Nao of China’ acted as the cultural and commercialvehicle that was in constant contact with the Far East and New Spain, then NaoNow in now the inheritor. Nao Now is determined to reclaim both the artisticand cultural values in a globalised world that needs to believe in a futurebeyond the economics and trade, especially in a new universal society...”