For the first time in the history of the Faenza Prize, the Chinese artist Wei Bao, winner under 35 of the 62nd edition of the Faenza Prize 2023 with the work "Courtyard Twilight Series IV", was given the opportunity to create a residency at the MIC of Faenza to produce new pieces in dialogue with the collections of the Museum and with the Faenza tradition.

After two months spent in the ceramic laboratory of the MIC Faenza, the new works will be set up in an exhibition in the Project Room of the MIC Faenza which will open on 23 September, at 17:00.

In his works, the artist Wei Bao focuses attention on the relationship between man and nature starting from a study of ancient civilizations and their settlements. After an idea and a reflection proposed by the director of the MIC Faenza Claudia Casali, Wei Bao wanted to tell the difficult historical moment of our post-flood area, starting a particular dialogue with the Zauli Museum, recovering clays and materials from the basement which suffered flood damage.

“In residence for two months in Faenza Wei Bao, a young talent active in Jingdezhen, - says Matteo Zauli, director of the Carlo Zauli Museum - declined the identity of his artistic research to today's Faenza and to the places visited, giving life to a engaging installation that intertwines one's culture of origin and the city in which he usually works, the ancient origin of relations between Italy and China, through the silk road, the materials of our city and of the laboratory that hosts it, the clay gullies from which Faenza ceramics draws life, the alluvial mixtures created in the cellars of the Carlo Zauli Museum".

"My project starts from a reflection on water - comments Wei Bao - and in particular from a teaching by Xuncius, a third century BC Chinese Confucian philosopher who reads 'Water can carry a boat, but it can also overwhelm it'". This saying was originally used as a metaphor for the relationship between the people and the emperor and has now been extended to various aspects. Water created human civilization and water can destroy everything man has created. Human beings are therefore forced to respect the power of nature. So one part of my design is inspired by the first part of the saying and the other by the second part. In the works that concern the second part, I have reduced my intervention to a minimum by accepting the natural process of deformation and breakage of the works".

During the inauguration Matteo Zauli and Wei Bao will talk about the results obtained from this long period of residency.