The idea of creating The Beacon International Art Media Platform came to me in September 2019, when it was my tenth year working in Chinese contemporary art. I observed that there was not a media in China consistently giving voices to Chinese artists, curators, and art practitioners in both Chinese and English languages. I had the idea of having a go at it myself. However, I was not experienced or influential enough to take on the project at the time. Even though a business plan was completed, the project was eventually shelved.

It was also in 2019, at the end of the year, the world suffered a watershed event: COVID-19 pandemic. Three years later, a new international order gradually took shape. Chinese contemporary art was the most sensitive in the eye of the pandemic, and it was the first to speak out: during Wuhan's lockdown in January-April 2020, art media ARTDBL interviewed Yang Guoxin and other artists from Wuhan who had experienced the tragedy first hand; in August 2020, Shenzhen's Xiangshan Art Museum invited Duan Jun as the curator to present “Brain Drain in the State of Chu - Hubei Contemporary Art Exhibition”, discussing Hubei artists, post-COVID-19 order, to mourn the dead and console the living.

One of the starting points of the platform when the idea was first formed was to let the world audience see a different side of China, and now that the COVID-19 pandemic is entering its third year, this starting point appears even more urgent. I have grown and gained more experiences in the three years, and I happen to be based in the relatively free Southern China – the time, the place and the people are all in place, and the arrow is on the bow.

Thus, The Beacon International Art Media Platform project is officially relaunched, and we will introduce works of Chinese artists, curators, and art practitioners in a three-pronged approach: a website, a Facebook page, and a WeChat public platform. The project is launched with a self-published “Interviews” column, the first installment of which interviews ten of the most active individuals in the Chinese contemporary art world, throwing ten questions at each of them, focusing on their personal journey and the changes in the way they work as a result of the pandemic, presenting the daily lives of individuals in the current historical context.

The future has arrived, the time is now, and we believe in finding a way out of a dead end. We hope to find it here with you!

Founder & Editor-in-Chief: the beacon

English proofreading: Christy Dai

LOGO design: Nowz Mok

Website construction: WYS System

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