Extraordinary paper art on show in Beijing – clothes, vases, flowers and carpet all made of the stuff

‘A Tribute to Tradition – The Exhibition of Contemporary Paper Art Works’ at a museum in Beijing highlights the versatility of paper as an artistic medium

The art includes a huge floor display that symbolises 10,000 bullets and 3,000 guns, a jacket made from dictionary pages and a vase from glutinous rice paper

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Detail of an art work, Uproar, No. 2, by Lin Shuangpeng at a new exhibition at Today Art Museum in Beijing. Photo: Simon Song

Published: 12:15pm, 27 Jul 2020Updated: 5:53pm, 27 Jul 2020

All is not what it seems at a major exhibition at Today Art Museum in Beijing, where porcelain vases are made of glutinous rice paper and a cotton jacket is woven together with pages pulled from a dictionary.

The show, “A Tribute to Tradition – The Exhibition of Contemporary Paper Art Works”, runs until August 3. It features more than 120 pieces created by 58 artists, and highlights the versatility of paper as an artistic medium.

Wang Lei is the artist behind the 110cm x 150cm (43 inches x 59 inches) jacket made with paper threads cut from English-Chinese dictionaries.

For his other work, Splendid Chinese Culture 2018, he took out a yearly subscription to Chinese newspaper Beijing Evening News before shredding the copies into strings to weave a 400cm x 600cm hanging carpet.

Visitors view paper art at the Today Art Museum’s exhibition. Photo: Simon Song

Carbon Folding, No. 1, by Tang Zhengwei, at A Tribute to Tradition – The Exhibition of Contemporary Paper Art Works. Photo: Simon Song