Exhibition explores the migration between Guangdong and Southeast Asia

Yanqiao village, in Nanhai district of Foshan, is one of many historical villages and towns in Guangdong province that became part of a wave of migration beginning in the late 19th century, when people left for "Nanyang" — a term then used to refer broadly to Southeast Asia — in search of a livelihood. Many of these migrants sent money home, enabling their families to build houses in their hometowns.

Today, in one such red-brick-and-wood house, artists are presenting works that explore this history and the communities shaped by migration.

Confluence: Flowing at the Fluid Boundaries brings together works by artists born between the 1940s and 1990s whose family members once sought a livelihood in Nanyang before returning to their hometowns, alongside works by Southeast Asian artists descended from people who migrated to Nanyang from villages such as Yanqiao.

Curated by Pang Hailong, the exhibition is rooted in the stories of Qiaoxiang — villages, towns and counties that are ancestral homes to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. It transforms family memories, as well as individual and collective experiences, into a broader historical reflection on the two-way exchange and integration between the cultures of migrants' hometowns and those of the places where they settled.

The exhibition is one of the highlights of the ongoing Art Field Nanhai festival, which runs until Jan 3, 2027. Works are presented at scattered sites across Foshan, with the exhibition at Yanqiao occupying one of the village's historical houses.