On October 25, 2025, the "We are all fragments that have been trekking for a long time - China Watermark Woodcut Youth Program 2025 Annual Exhibition" was grandly opened at the Asian Art Center. This exhibition is curated by Zhang Xumin and showcases over 40 watermark woodcut works by eleven artists including Cao Yu, Cui Li, Dong Minjie, Qi Ziyi, Lu Chen, Wang Qifan, Wang Yizhi, Xu Chentao, Xiansu, Yan Xinguo, and Zhou Jiaqing.

Preface

Zhang Xumin

The poem "Praise" by Swedish poet Tomas Transtr ö mer metaphorically represents the drifting and cohesion of humanity in time and space through the "long traveled fragments" - in the long journey, we are both the dust of history and the spark of the future. In terms of the existence of the universe, humans are both rebels of nature and eternal prisoners of it; Human life is scattered like fragments across different dimensions - material, spiritual, virtual - and shines immortal in the hymn of art.

The spiritual orientation contained in the exhibition theme "The Long Marching Fragments" is multifaceted: on the one hand, the modernization process of civilization constantly cuts through the physical space between nature and oneself, and the industrial jungle of steel and cement makes humanity increasingly lost in the maze of modern systems. The ambition to conquer and the backlash of nature become the ultimate contradiction that the postmodern world cannot escape, while the hope for truth, goodness, and beauty waits for redemption like a "sinking stone"; On the other hand, although the flames of the digital revolution seem to illuminate the path of human civilization, the "flame tongue" of technological frenzy has also left binary scars on the social fabric, eroding people's daily emotions and perceptions. Life memories that should have been vivid are quantified as symbol fragments and virtual codes, and silence echoes the unanswered loneliness.

Indeed, the creation of watermark woo