Chinese Pavilion at 2011 Venice Biennale Explores Scent and Beauty

For the 2011 Venice Biennale, curator Peng Feng organized the Chinese Pavilion under the theme "Pervasion," focusing on beauty through scent and taste. The pavilion featured five installations: clouds of tea fragrance, misters of wine and spirits, aromatic medicinal herbs in porcelain pots, incense fog, and virtual lotus-scented snow. Artists Cai Zhisong, Liang Yuanwei, Pan Gongkai, Yang Maoyuan, and Yuan Gong, aged 30 to 60 and never before exhibited at the Biennale, created works spanning ink, oil painting, sculpture, and conceptual installation. Peng Feng, a professor of aesthetics at Peking University and independent critic, drew on Chinese traditional aesthetics and Richard Shusterman's concept of "somaesthetics." Shusterman, a philosopher and director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University, conducted the interview. The pavilion offered a cool respite from Venice's summer heat with Pan Gongkai's "Snow Melting into Lotus," a 20-meter corridor kept below 10°C, and pleasant aromas reminiscent of those Marco Polo brought back 800 years ago. Peng Feng aimed to enrich visitors' sensory judgment and prompt reflection on past and present, East and West.