The theme of the third Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 2019 is “Boundless Encounters”, which is mainly considered and carried out from the following aspects from the perspective of curating. One is through sensitivity and predictions about unknown future by the artists to build the transformation of contemporary new dimension in the inheritance of traditional culture. The third triennial presents the artists at home and abroad for three years in the latest progress of fiber art creation and change. In addition, it also reveals personal survival of reality of the growth of the multi-dimensional ecology in the tangible and intangible, virtual and actual, the interval structure of light and shadow. The second is to expand the relationship of fiber art, society and daily life, as well as fiber art’s super daily leading role in social fashion life in consumer culture. The third is the new exploration of high-tech and new media on the concept, material and visual language of fiber art which trying to break the previous homogeneous limitation of fiber media, including digital fiber, intelligent fabric, digital weaving, biological fiber and other new media creation in the present and future trend of multi-dimensional links. In terms of the exhibition structure and arrangement, according to the existing conditions of the exhibition site, we have five-unit themes of “mingled interval”, “boundless disengagement”, “entanglement beyond the boundary”, “the second skin” and “value for price”, and Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen's solo exhibition of the theme of “seven days”. There are 78 pieces of works by 40 artists from 18 countries and regions to participate into the triennial. All works are distributed over three exhibition halls: Zhejiang Art Museum, China National Silk Museum and Art Museum of China Academy of Art. At the same time, with the cooperation of seminars, workshops, public education and other related activities, this triennial tries to give three-dimensional attention and cognition to the ecology of fiber art creation in the past three years. As the curator for the third triennial, we hope that through the exhibition and related academic activities, the interwoven interdependence of fiber art in the context of globalization can demonstrate the uniqueness and diversity of fiber art creation in China and different countries and regions. From different cultural contexts of “localization”, the order, situation and problems of fiber art creation are sorted out. The fiber art is separated from the narrow and static mode of creation and gets rid of the previous focused interpretation of the concept of fiber art. As a medium, it is placed in the broad contemporary art system and extended to the practice of contemporary art expression and various possibilities of the uncertain future. Thus, it forms the continuous construction of fiber art in the metaphysical and crosses the unknown boundary as its only goal of continuous experiments.

    In recent years, with the variation of cultural globalization, the globalization of space form is not within the limit of the nationality and national boundaries nor the two-way communication between people, information, knowledge, image, ideology flow. Its existence and operation to form a variety of other form of culture flow which can’t be explained from regions but a kind of cross regional culture. The new cultural relationship generated and formed by such spatial changes is neither the strong assimilated culture nor the weak assimilated culture, but the multiple and multi-combined cultural mode generated by the multicultural flows in today's world. There are as many different cultural places as different ways of flow. It is a plural culture that combines different cultural circles is the communication mechanism of culture. Due to the gap between the globalization of culture and the different regions of the locality, it has formed a kind of spatial connection which including politics, economy, culture and art. It is specific to the contemporary art field that caused the flow of the artist and all kinds of culture in the collision of a variety of circumstances. As a representation form of cosmopolitan art, although there exists diversity, mobility and uncertainty, it has become the generation of creative concepts and visual language. Thus, the cross-border creation represents that the discourse of art has taken a turn in the background of globalization, it promotes changes of cultural resource utilization, creative ideas and media. Contemporary art has developed from conceptual art to “contextual” art. Some artists make use of the resources of traditional culture and symbols to create, while others make use of special elements of different cultures. New media art comes from a roaring. As a new creation phenomenon, we used to talk about art and think it is the concept that gives the meaning of works, but now we find and interpret the meaning of works more from the cultural context. We can no longer simply say that an artist’s creation derives modernity from a certain traditional culture, and we can’t take “tradition” as the main basis of criticism. Instead, we should see the result of collision, adaptation and communication between artist and other cultures. As evaluating artists’ works, it is necessary to judge and evaluate them from a new point of view. The fiber art features, which are composed of materials, techniques and methods, cross the entanglement with the artist’s life in the bottom line of the disorder of history and real culture. They separate from the creation order formed by the previous fiber art and the excessive entanglement of uncertain future. The detached line is not self-limiting but transcends the fiber with the force of itself. Eventually it elevates the creation of fiber art to the process with interlacing, deduction and transformation with relatively independent, mature and complete individual works. Thus, these works are difficult to the end and possesses the induction, recognition and even tension of traditional narration. In the continuous three Hangzhou Fiber Art Triennials, it not only provides multiple communication opportunities for artists with fiber art or fiber thinking as the main medium and mode, but also pays attention to the commonness and difference between the process rather than expecting a definite result. In fact, this is a special cultural experience of participating artists as well as a contrasting experience caused by globalization. Therefore, “mingled interval” and “boundless disengagement” as the unit themes are based on the new phenomenon formed in the recent three years of fiber art creation. It promotes the utilization of new cultural resources and transformation of artistic creation methods through the reflection and expression of participating artists. In the process of continuous displacement of living space and information communication, the artists’ creation and exhibition of also completed through a series of experience and imagination of time and space. For the exhibition itself and the participating artists, it is not only a global communication but also different effects of transformation and replacement of space as well as a display of a new way of multiple expression and narrative discourse. This deductive approach deliberately displaces the order for the fibrous structure. It implies abrupt distortion and abstract confusion. And this mysterious vibration as prerequisite for the visual is to achieve the real and performance of the interval, hybrid and superposition, expanding the capacity of conflict and the vagaries of the space. This is the adsorption of such a kind of mutual relation. Or perhaps it is the multifarious triviality of daily life that leads to the psychological trace of annoyed mood and fantastic imagination.

    In contrast between reality and fiction, it highlights the subjective artistic creation and consciousness of self on the distorted dimension. Then it compulsively brings us back to the situation of social reality. This kind of action and visual effect is exactly a kind of true reflection of the individual and even the living state. Therefore, it is not so much that they are dealing with the fiber materials, but rather that it is a kind of experimental treatment intentionally, which is also an attempt on collage and construction to control the expectation of the audience and let the audience experience the surprise generated by the fiber media. For the exhibition itself and the participating artists, the kind of result and method it takes is more of a group than an individual artist. Probably it is also a kind of feeling that we are on the scene.
There has never been a time for people to feel so “intertwined and uncertain” for the “present and the future”. We all seem to be feverishly eager to get ahead of the next global turn. There has never been a time as the “future” has been so close to us that those incredible predictions of bioengineering, genetic code, artificial intelligence have suddenly begun to come true. Fast-moving social systems always push us: sometimes only a single step can you step to a future that was once out of reach. The latest development of contemporary art is the combination of science and technology -- the art brought by new media, new technology and new ideas is an unprecedented form of artistic expression. This kind of art doesn’t provide any aesthetic decorations or cultural entertainment products according to previous artistic concepts but directly or indirectly expresses artists’ cognition, understanding and experiment between art and new media in the era of digital technology. Not only can you see the progress of information technology and the rise of emerging art as well as the traditional aesthetics to extract the new direction of the future art in its development, category and subject. It also provides a new horizon and feeling for art by new technology revolution. Or it may say that visual art produced by the new media technology caused a variety of possibilities. Not only as new media makes reality but also makes non-reality objects, it blurs the difference between reality and non-reality and also breaks the strict boundary between them. Eventually, it directly leads to the reduction or even disappearance of the distance between art and virtual to form a new way of watching and aesthetic mood. People’s thinking in the age of artificial intelligence is different from the linear way of the age of machine and printing. Every form of visual art has integrality and immediacy. It is a spatial existence and focuses on instantaneous experience. Moreover, the appearance of virtual images has changed the relationship between original copy and facsimile. It directly leads to the disappearance of the worship of art. Art has become the object of people to browse at will. Its displaying and consumption have become one of the bases of its own existence. This kind of aesthetic appreciation is the embodiment of our paces of life, way of life and concept in the field of art. The new media technology provides the technical guarantee for the viewers' aesthetic initiative and the experience in the process of mutual interaction. Because the new media art relying on digital network technology can create an aesthetic space with personal experience. In this kind of virtual visual space with personal experience, people can get rid of the shackles and restrictions of fixed roles in real life, which can be the intuition, experience and sense of various possiblilties and even the rehearsal of future life imagination.

    So the “entanglement beyond the boundary” unit in this exhibition implies the future of fiber art in metaphysical and borderless cross-media creation beyond its existing experience. In particular, high-tech and new media explore language mode of fiber art in media materials as to try to break the limitation and static mode of traditional fiber art media. Finally, all efforts are to establish the multi-dimensional interweaving and link to fiber art in new media and new materials at present and in the trends of future. In order to stimulate the fiber art in a broader, mixed, even unpredictable art experiment process, it is necessary to cross the boundary and create an innovative multi-pattern.
Art always creates the future through fragments of the past and the present. The basic attribute of fiber art in the narrow sense lies in the use of fiber materials and handmade weaving for creation. It regards traditional fiber materials as a kind of contemporary art value transformation to weave and display personal unique visual space. We make Yin Xiuzhen, who is a mature and representative Chinese artist, her solo exhibition to be a parallel project of Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art. According to the existing conditions of the Art Museum of China Academy of Art, she used seven exhibition halls with a seven-day duration to present seven works created by her in recent years. The interval of “seven days”, its sequence and implication constitute study case of Yin Xiuzhen. What is particularly special is that some of her installation works make use of fiber media which is not limited to fiber but in the thinking mode of fiber. For example, her works such as “Time Fiber” and “Weight of experience” created by cement, ceramics and other media, especially reflect the interactive nature of public space. The private clothes—were collected as for personal experiences and the temperature of the fiber media. At the same time, she also invited volunteers actively involved in the process of her works. It makes the transformation of work form to let works be hidden in the public space. It also builds to the collective cultural memory which is beyond the general work interaction and finally becomes sympathetic way of real-made article to form the value of the individual in the field of public recognition and sublimation. The sublimation of this recognition is not simply to let the audience enter into the work but to extend and expand our memory and experience through the work so that the sense of bringing into the work itself constitutes an interactive scene and becomes a container for our thinking and memory. Yin Xiuzhen once said: “Experience, memory, body temperature and emotion are woven together to form a universe of spirit and emotion.” Therefore, it can be said that Yin Xiuzhen represents and reflects an aspect of the current situation of contemporary fiber art creation in China which constitutes a direct reason for inviting Yin Xiuzhen to make a solo exhibition.

    As a part of fiber art, fashion design is closely related to human's daily life. Besides loincloths in hibernation function for human survival, as the “second skin” in the interval in public sector and private space, it can timely reflect a remark of our fashion life in the age changes as well as a symbol of status, body politics which bearing the different civilization and the status of consumer culture. It has infinite kinds and styles. As a fashion hobby it brought, it has also become and influenced the pursuit and imagination of people's desire for daily life. Therefore, the desire for consumption is not only limited to the function of clothes but also has socialized value and significance. In essence, fashion design is also a kind of information. Modern economic system relies on information technology to realize the unlimited development for consumer demand so as to ensure its own continuous prosperity and development. The so-called development of unlimited consumer demand is actually the development of people's unlimited desire for consumption which is to rationalize personal development, instant gratification, pursuit of change and other specific values into individual free choice in daily life in the form of a kind of socialized universal ethics and customs. At the same time, the purpose to evoke sensitivity through continuous visual design is to capture the feelings, desires and motivations of consumers. Through the design and commercial promotion of these clothes, we can further understand the aesthetic taste, customs, craft level and other social contents of this social era. The “second skin” and “value for price” units composed of fiber art and clothing design as well as the works of relevant artists are taken as the creation of these artists according to their specific contexts. They not only transform the historical context of consumer culture and personal experience into a contemporary exhibition site, at the same time, it also shows her/their different inheritance, exploration and aesthetic taste of fiber material and fashion design. Eventually it forms a close range of dialogue and communication by “asking for the wisdom in clothes” or differences and conflicts in the visual field so as to provide the audience with popularization, understanding and interpretation of fiber art and daily life related to the necessary visual basis.

    This exhibition has a certain thematic and prescriptive nature in the curating. For participating artists, probably they have found multi-media such as fiber to create works. It is not quite far away from the traditional fiber art context and specific system of living area. It finally presents a reality of social space as dependent on fiber art and mixture of visual material culture. They are constantly trying to cross the various boundaries, limitations and constraints that have been formed. All of those disappear as you cross over. Although there will come new boundaries, In fact, fiber artists are experimenting with life situations, conflicts, entanglements and so on to weave into a network with different longitude and latitude. Just as at the critical point among these works, they constitute a process of endless abstraction and extension. As viewers, we seem to be enveloped in a narrow space: we are symbolizing, metaphorizing and experiencing our reality and future but we are still in an infinite contradiction which cannot be grasped and determined.