CAFA & Red Gate Open Studios

ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 17

CAFA

Central Academy of Fine Arts, CAFA is a world class university with many distinguished faculty and alumni. It is located in the northeast Chaoyang section of Beijing. In 2008, on the 90th anniversary, the school opened a major museum designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. There is a well-stocked art supply store on campus.

Red Gate Gallery, mentioned in a previous post, also operates an international artist residency program. Different from Inside Out Art Museum’s residency, Red Gate has space for six international artists at a time (more if couples) and is located in a designated art district. IOAM is primarily a contemporary art museum and theater complex with one or two artists in residence at a time. Its neighborhood contains a diverse range of urban life, businesses, the daily shouting and singing of children at a middle school playground, restaurants, grocery store, bank, and street vendors selling fruit and clothes. I preferred living and working at IOAM, an integrated community with a wide range of regular people, none of them westerners except me.

It takes about an hour to go anywhere in the city from IOAM in Haidian. Using taxis is not much faster than public transportation, a combination of bus and subway, due to heavy traffic at all times of day. However, this trip required transfers with a walk at the end. Mixing in taxis kept it under two hours.

CAFA