Brain Garden — The 5th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival 2023 & China Academy of Art Graduation Season kicks off on Thursday in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Brain Garden — The 5th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival 2023 & China Academy of Art Graduation Season kicked off on Thursday in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, featuring a variety of online and offline shows as well as activities centered on the future and youth.

The Youth Art Festival is presented online on CAACOSMOS and West Lake Sky Screen and offline at six venues, including the Zhejiang Exhibition Hall, the West Lake Art Museum, and the Zhejiang Art Museum with a total exhibition area of nearly over 70,000 meters. Over 3,000 works from more than 2,500 graduates are showcased.

The theme of this year's edition of the festival is Brain Garden as the garden represents an age of innocence envisioned by humans. An educational institution is like a garden. While learning in an art academy is not like roaming carefree in a garden, but rather a journey of working with nature and growing with beauty.

This festival is co-hosted by the Zhejiang Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the Publicity Department of the CPC Hangzhou Municipal Committee, the China Academy of Art, and the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music.

The opening ceremony started with an AIGC video entitled Oddinary, indicating that humans are at a crossroads in a new era of intelligent civilization. At the MR opening ceremony, AI Garden led people into an exploration of a future created amid the intertwining of human beings and technology in the era of AI, enabling the pursuit of dreams and ideals without constraints.

Over 80 works from 46 students in fashion and apparel design at the School of Design, CAA were showcased in the fashion show during the opening ceremony. The designers created their works with an open mindset and expressed multiple dimensions, placing emphasis on exploration results in art, philosophy, science and technology while paying attention to topics such as survival crisis, cultural alienation, social care, body language and emotional barriers.