Following the previous campaign launched for the Chinese New Year 2022, Prada announced the winners of the ‘Action in the Year of the Tiger’ with a special presentation, open to the public from August 31 until 18 September, at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai.
The culmination of Prada’s initiative is to raise public awareness of the severe risk of the tiger going extinct, while celebrating creativity at the same time. The presentation rewards 20 winning entries from students at Chinese and international art schools, who were tasked with submitting their personal interpretation of this majestic, powerful animal.
The submissions selected by the jury, made up of artists Liu Ye, Lu Yang and Goshka Macuga, were created by Ziran Chen, Sheng Cheng, fanfan, Huawen Kao, Yihong Liu, Zhicheng Liu, Chang Su, Danmeng Wang, Xiyuan Wang, Jiayan Wei, Yichuan Yue, Yumeng Zang, Jiayan Zheng, Peilin Zhou, Xiaoyuan Zhou, Donglai Zhu (China), Daria Avdeeva (Russia), Joshua Abramovich (United States), Leehyun Kwun (Republic of Korea) and Peixuan Hor (Singapore).
Liu Ye notes: “The Year of the Tiger is a remarkable event! Tigers are beautiful animals, which always inspire boundless imagination. The tiger and Prada can be seen metaphorically, creating a dual theme that is challenging to work with. Many entries showed careful thought and professional visual effects. The selection process was tough, as the standard was so high.”
“It was a great honour to be invited to sit on the jury for this competition. The zodiac is unique to China, and the tiger is a very cool animal, whether in nature or in the zodiac,” adds Lu Yang. “The submissions incorporated a wide variety of forms, from hand-drawn works to video art and multimedia interactive installations. It was a very diverse competition. I am sure the final selected works will form a very interesting exhibition at Prada Rong Zhai.”
Goshka Macuga also comments on the quality of the submissions: “In this year of the tiger, the symbolic value of the sign characterised as powerful, confident and dynamic seemed to surface in so many of the works submitted for the Prada contest. The strength of the work made my job as a judge very difficult. It was wonderful to connect with creative people working in China through the selection process, and to see how they approached this theme. The great diversity of the works wove interesting parallels between art and design.”
The upcoming initiatives linked to the ‘Action in the Year of the Tiger’ campaign include a workshop and a documentary.
The “Hello, Tiger” documentary, produced by Prada with GQ China and shot at the Amur Tiger habitat, will feature the participation of Prada ambassadors singer Cai Xu Kun, actress Chunxia as well as table tennis champion Ma Long.
