Foreword to the Exhibition
Launched in 2008, the China, Japan, Korea Art Cosmos-Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibitionis one of the longest-running and most influential cross-border contemporary art exchange platforms in East Asia. Since its first edition was held at the Art Museum of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University in Beijing, the exhibition has been held 20 times in China, Japan and South Korea over the past 18 years, bringing together nearly 2,000 active artists and designers from various countries. Adhering to the original intention of "breaking the existing conceptual boundaries between countries and promoting genuine artistic exchanges between people", it is jointly curated by authoritative curators from China, Japan and South Korea, and is a cross-cultural art event with profound historical significance and professional authority.

The 2026 edition of the exhibition is held at Art Space Taihodo in Kumamoto, Japan from July 22 to July 28, 2026, with opening hours 10:00-18:00 (until 13:00 on July 28th). The venue is located at 5-6 Kamitori-cho, Chuo-ku, Kumamoto-shi, Kumamoto-ken, Japan. The exhibition is organized by Organizing Committee of China-Japan-Korea Contemporary Art Exhibition, NPO International Art Cosmos Center, co-organized by Art Space Taihodo, with art directors Shenghuang Lin, Moto Uota, Izumi Konno. This exhibition brings together works by nearly 100 creators from different fields across the three countries, exploring the diverse development directions of contemporary art and design. Six creators from China have presented cutting-edge cross-disciplinary works, showcasing the vibrant vitality of contemporary Chinese design and art.

Chujun Yang : The Poetic Intersection of Technological Reconstruction and Humanistic Healing

Exhibited Work:Forest Spirit of Breath, 60×60cm
As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney and Auckland University of Technology, and an associate professor at the School of Design, Shunde Polytechnic University, Chujun Yang has long been committed to teaching and research in design, medical product design, and exhibition design, achieving remarkable results in design theory and innovative practice. She received her Ph.D. in Design from Tatung University, Taiwan in 2024. Her academic achievements have been widely published in high-level international journals such as AHCI and EI, covering cutting-edge fields such as virtual reality technology, interaction design, and visual marketing. She has also presided over multiple provincial, ministerial, and national-level teaching achievement and scientific research projects, and has been awarded the First Prize of the China Staff Science and Technology Innovation Award.

The exhibited work Forest Spirit of Breathis a conceptual visual research poster rooted in the "Bye-Bye Virus" children's nebulization system. In this work, Chujun Yang innovatively proposes the concept of "biomimetic demedicalization" for hardware components. By reconstructing the rigid nebulization mask into a "spirit" from the ancient forest, and using smooth wing-like contours and soft pearlescent texture, she transforms a resistant forced treatment into a mysterious "transformation ritual".
This visual research work deeply explores the profound intersection of industrial precision and humanistic care, vividly confirming the powerful power of design as a medium for emotional healing. It breaks down the barrier between cold technology and children's innocent imagination, turning the tedious breathing action into a courageous spiritual exploration journey.

Tiannan Zhao: Humanistic Inquiry in the Age of Algorithms

Exhibited Work:Who Controls Intelligence?, 40×40cm
Based in London, Tiannan Zhao is a product designer and cross-disciplinary AI creator with both commercial design experience and artistic thinking. With a strong background in AI-native products, enterprise-level SaaS and complex system design, she has long focused on exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital culture and contemporary expression, and is committed to transforming technology from a "functional infrastructure" into an artistic expression medium carrying cultural value. She is a highly influential young creator in the global AI design field.

The exhibited work Who Controls Intelligence?continues her consistent creative core: exploring the power structure and aesthetic evolution in the digital age, and inquiring how artificial intelligence redefines "author", "control" and "expression". Tiannan Zhao regards AI both as a tool and as an actor with agency in contemporary systems. By introducing ASCII Art, an early internet visual language, this work establishes a dialogue between the origins of digital expression and the current algorithmic environment, juxtaposing primitive computational forms with contemporary AI concepts, presenting a unique tension of time, technology and evolution.

In addition to her creative work, Tiannan Zhao leads a global AI builder community, long promoting the development of human-centered AI products and facilitating the expression of diverse voices in the global design field. Her work explores how design thinking can guide technological development, emphasizing that human creativity and wisdom should remain the core driver of intelligent systems.

Yi Xiong(Aris Xiong): Natural Poetics in Jewelry

Exhibited Work:Verdant Motion, 40×30cm
Based in New York, Yi Xiong is a jewelry designer and founder and design director of the high-end custom jewelry brand Aris Fine Studio. She studied oil painting since childhood, and has long been immersed in color, nature and emotional expression, forming a distinct personal creative style: characterized by vivid color language and delicate emotional narrative, focusing on the connection between personal memory, life moments and contemporary high-end jewelry.

Xiong Yi excels at integrating structural design language, the natural characteristics of colored gemstones and natural inspiration into collectible jewelry creation, establishing an exquisite balance between artistic expression and wearability. Her works have won multiple international design awards in North America and Europe, with judges commenting that her works "demonstrate a unique and contemporary fusion between natural aesthetics, Oriental artistic temperament and modern high-end jewelry design". The exhibited work Verdant Motional so continues her creative style, condensing natural vitality within a square inch, showcasing the unique aesthetic of contemporary jewelry art.

Cen Shen: Exploring the Dynamic Symbiosis Between Architecture and Nature

Exhibited Work:Garden Clinic, 65×48cm
Cen Shen is an internationally renowned award-winning architectural designer and researcher, and founder of CSLab, an architectural research and practice platform. Her work continuously explores the dynamic relationships between architecture, environment and material systems, and is committed to establishing future-oriented sustainable architectural design methods.

With building envelope systems as her core research focus, Cen Shen is one of the earliest researchers globally to focus on "how architectural boundaries shape spatial experience, environmental performance and the interactive relationship between humans and nature". In her practice, architecture is no longer a static physical structure, but a dynamic system that can respond to environmental changes and social needs, an adaptive medium connecting humans and nature, space and time. Her works have won multiple international authoritative awards including the IF Design Award, Architecture MasterPrize and A' Design Award. Currently, she participates in the design and development of super high-rise residential building envelope systems in New York, and also regularly serves as a judge for architectural competitions, continuously promoting the next generation of architectural creators to respond to global environmental issues. The exhibited work Garden Clinic presents her cutting-edge thinking on future architectural forms, demonstrating the unique depth of architectural design as contemporary art.

Yue Fan & Yani Shi: Exploring Future Interaction in Extreme Scenarios

Exhibited Work:URSA, 26×35cm, 2 pieces total
URSA, a collaboration between user experience designer Yue Fan and product designer Yani Shi , is a highly futuristic design work in this exhibition, demonstrating the forward-looking exploration of human-computer interaction in extreme scenarios by young Chinese designers.

Yue Fan currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA, and is currently working at Samsung on global health product design incorporating wearable devices such as the Galaxy Watch. Previously, she explored next-generation XR interaction modes at HTC VIVE. Her practice covers mobile terminals, wearable devices and spatial computing, and she has long focused on AI-driven human-computer interaction experience, exploring how to transform complex algorithms and data into human-centered interactions that users can perceive and understand.

Yani Shi is a product designer based in San Francisco, graduated from the Department of Design at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on human-computer interaction experience design in highly complex systems. In her professional experience spanning China and the United States, she has continuously explored the core proposition of "how design can reduce cognitive load and improve collaboration efficiency between humans and systems under extreme constraint conditions". Her works have won multiple international awards including the iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award and European Product Design Award.

The collaborative work URSA extends design thinking to the forefront of human exploration – future lunar missions, conceiving an AI-driven augmented reality interaction system: through spatialized information presentation and fully hands-free interaction mode, it supports astronauts to obtain key information and maintain situational awareness in high-pressure, high-uncertainty extreme environments, achieving efficient collaboration with intelligent systems. It further explores human cognitive, navigation and communication experiences in extreme environments, and is a future-oriented design work that is both forward-looking and practical.

Conclusion
Over the past 18 years, the China, Japan, Korea Art Cosmos-Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition has always used art as a language to break geographical and cultural boundaries and promote in-depth dialogue among creators from the three East Asian countries. The six Chinese creators participating in this exhibition come from different fields such as design, architecture, jewelry and contemporary art. From humanistic thinking in the AI era to scenario experiments for future exploration, from the contemporary translation of traditional aesthetics to cutting-edge exploration of sustainable architecture, they showcase the diverse landscape of cross-disciplinary integration in contemporary Chinese creation, and contribute a vibrant Chinese voice to the exchange among creators from the three countries.

Appendix: Basic Information of This Exhibition

Exhibition Name:
China, Japan, Korea Art Cosmos-Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition 2026
Exhibition Dates:
July 22 (Wednesday) - July 27 (Monday), 2026, 10:00-18:00 (closing time 13:00 on the final day)
Venue:
Art Space Taihodo
5-6 Kamitori-cho, Chuo-ku, Kumamoto-shi, Kumamoto-ken, Japan
Organizer:
Organizing Committee of China-Japan-Korea Contemporary Art Exhibition
NPO International Art Cosmos Center
Art Directors
Shenghuang Lin, Moto Uota, Izumi Konno