Italy exhibition explores ceramic heritage and exchange

Chinese art anthropologist Fang Lili was recently invited to participate in an international ceramic art exhibition and a series of cultural exchanges in Italy, where she shared her research on Jingdezhen in East China's Jiangxi province and its transformation from a center of porcelain production into a contemporary hub of art and cultural creativity.

Fang, a founding president of the Chinese Society for Anthropologies of Art and a professor at Southeast University, attended the opening of Creative Clays — Ceramic Connections across UNESCO Creative Cities in Faenza, Italy, in early September.

The exhibition marked Faenza's entry into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a City of Crafts and Folk Arts in 2025. It brings together works representing three ceramic cities in the network: Faenza, Jingdezhen in China, and Limoges in France.

Faenza and Jingdezhen have been sister cities since 2013, providing a long-standing foundation for cultural and artistic exchanges. Jingdezhen joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2014.

The exhibition explores connections among the three cities' ceramic traditions. It also features images introducing Faenza's ceramic heritage and the Taoxichuan Ceramic Art Avenue in Jingdezhen, a former industrial area transformed into a creative hub.

Fang has spent more than three decades researching Jingdezhen, producing books and academic papers on its ceramic traditions and social transformation. Her research has also examined how artistic creation can help activate cultural heritage and reshape local development.

During her visit, Fang discussed how Jingdezhen has evolved beyond its traditional role as a ceramic production center, drawing on its heritage to foster contemporary artistic activity and new forms of cultural life at the Carlo Zauli Museum in Faenza.

She described this transformation through the concept of a "Jingdezhen model", in which art activates cultural heritage and generates new forms of social and economic activity.

Fang argued that Jingdezhen should be studied as a living example of social transformation, and comparing it with other ceramic cities can help identify similarities and differences in how traditional craft communities adapt to contemporary society.

The Faenza exchange provided an international setting to discuss Jingdezhen's experience alongside other cities with long-standing ceramic traditions, highlighting the potential for cross-cultural research into heritage, creativity and sustainable development.