Jimei × Arles returns to Xiamen, debuting New Motion Award

The 12th edition of the Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival will return to Xiamen, East China, on Nov 20 and run until Jan 3, 2027, promising Chinese art aficionados a rich, diverse program of activities, according to a news conference held on Tuesday in Beijing.

A leading annual event for photography and moving image in Asia, Jimei × Arles remains China's only long-term collaborative platform with France's Les Rencontres d'Arles since 2015. Three Shadows Photography Art Centre presents and produces the 2026 festival, co-produced by Xiamen Tianxia Jimei Media Co Ltd and co-presented by Les Rencontres d'Arles.

This year's festival will bring together more than 30 exhibitions and almost 2,000 works — spanning photography, moving image, installation, and multimedia — from China, France, Switzerland, the US, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, Norway, and other regions, the organizers said.

In addition to exhibitions, the 2026 Jimei × Arles also features workshops, lectures, awards, and the newly launched art fair.

"This year's Jimei × Arles coincides with the 200th anniversary of the birth of photography, giving it special commemorative significance," Florent Aydalot, minister-counsellor for cultural, educational and scientific affairs at the French embassy in Beijing, said at the event. "Over the past two centuries, photography has continually explored new modes of expression, renewed the ways we observe the world, and steadily expanded the boundaries of artistic creation."

Aydalot also commended Jimei × Arles as a model of creative collaboration between China and France in photography and its mission to support the growth of a new generation of artists.

RongRong (Lu Zhirong), co-founder of Three Shadows and co-artistic director of Jimei × Arles, reaffirmed the festival's mission to foster global exchange and support the development of emerging Chinese artists and curators.

"Every year, we select outstanding exhibitions from Arles and bring them back to Xiamen — not simply to replicate the content of a French photography festival in China," RongRong said. "What we hope for, rather, is that through these works, Chinese audiences can see how artists from different cultural backgrounds understand reality, society, history, and personal experience."

"At the same time, we want these works to generate new ways of seeing and new discussions within the Chinese context," he added.

RongRong observed that while China boasts a vibrant community of talented lens-based artists, their ongoing international presence and meaningful exchanges remain limited. He stressed that the festival aims to help more Chinese artists and their works gain wider recognition abroad.

"Through the Jimei × Arles Discovery Award, quite a few Chinese artists have gained the opportunity to exhibit at the Rencontres d'Arles, and some have entered the international spotlight through Jimei × Arles," he said. "But frankly speaking, this is still far from enough."

Zhang Yunpeng, a member of the standing committee of the Communist Party of China Jimei district committee in Xiamen, praised the growing influence of the Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival.

"Over more than a decade, the festival has presented over 330 exhibitions and more than 850 public events, attracting about 600,000 visitors, making it a significant cultural brand of Jimei district," Zhang said.

The official said that the local government hopes that, by hosting the annual photo festival, it can better revitalize the city's industrial heritage sites and historical blocks and let art empower the coastal city.

Diverse programs

Five exhibitions from the 57th Rencontres d'Arles will travel to Xiamen. Highlights include Philippe Baudouin's We Are Not Alone — Alien Images on UFO photography, Rebekka Deubner's La terre amoureuse on land and labor, and two Discovery Award projects: Mallory Lowe Mpoka's Cosmologies of the Heiresses and Phan Quang's Re/cover. The 2026 Book Awards shortlist and winners complete the selection.

The Jimei × Arles Discovery Award, one of the festival's signature initiatives, will present an exhibition of eight artists nominated by five Chinese galleries. The winner will receive a cash prize of 100,000 yuan ($14,943) before tax and a sponsored solo exhibition at the Rencontres d'Arles the following year.

The Jimei × Arles "Curatorial Programme for Photography and Moving Image", supported by French fashion house Chanel, will hold its third nonprofit seminar ahead of the festival's opening in Xiamen. Three veteran curators — He Yining, Carol Yinghua Lu, and Liu Ding — are invited to mentor emerging Chinese curators and researchers.

The programme will present Afterglow, a group show curated by Rachel Wuang (Wang Liqiu), winner of the 2025/26 Curator of the Year. The exhibition examines individual vitality in the industrial landscapes of Northeast China.

This year's festival highlights moving image through the Luminous Motion section, and in collaboration with SmallRig, a Shenzhen-based camera accessory manufacturer, inaugurates the New Motion Award to support practice in this field.

Check out its official website to discover more about the 12th Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival and opening week events.