In collaboration with the PhotoEspaña festival, from 25 June to 24 August, the Instituto Cervantes of Madrid is exhibiting in its lobby (calle Alcalá, 49) the photographic exhibition China 354, by Luis Cuenca Castro (Madrid, 1975), a filmmaker who has been living in China for more than ten years. Free admission.
In twenty-four HD televisions and three vertical LED screens, the exhibition China 354 presents three hundred fifty-four one-minute short films that the author recorded in all thirty provinces of the Asian country. The videos, taken together, constitute a diary composed of episodes from everyday life, a mosaic of urban and rural, modern and ancestral, identity, family and sustainability.
China 354 is an audiovisual exhibition that explores the relationship between natural cycles and contemporary life in China through the ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar, which divides the year into 24 seasons based on the positions of the Sun and the Moon. This temporary structure, which still marks holidays and agricultural practices today, contrasts with the frenetic pace of the country, revealing a harmonious coexistence between tradition and modernity.
Cuenca’s work is a visual diary that transcends simple observation, since the author not only documents what he sees, but also interacts with subjects, becoming himself an object of observation. Thus, China 354 not only portrays a country in transformation, but it invites the viewer to reflect on his own place in the continuous cycle of time.
The opening ceremony will be welcomed by the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero; the ambassador of China, Yao Jing, and the audiovisual author Luis Cuenca Castro.
