What's on

Blurring boundaries

The To Be the Better One exhibition zooms in on an emerging trend, where those in creative fields embrace multiple identities by blurring the boundaries of different sections of arts and culture. In addition to their professions, they have developed a variety of interests and have found new areas of work brimming with imagination. The exhibition at Wind H Art Center, running through Sept 9, features representative figures in art, architecture and graphic design leading a cross-disciplinary lifestyle, exploring new methods of creation. The exhibition shows the possibilities of a diverse, mixed state of work prompted by a new generation, when artists not just make art but also design, and architects and designers also make art. Looking at the works on show, one will feel the featured artists do not divide their tasks into categories, and a non-unitary style has become the dominant trend of their work and life. "The beginning of a new job comes with a new identity (for the artists), thereafter opening up new directions for their creation," exhibition curator Cui Cancan says. "The new orientations redefine, or create a new life (for them), a new self and a new possibility, which constitute a part of the core of the methodology of a new generation."

10:30 am-6:30 pm, Wednesday-Sunday. 31a Wanhongli, 798 Art Zone, Chaoyang district, Beijing.

Revolutionary spirit

Yan Han, the late professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, has been recognized as an achieved woodcut engraver and a determined revolutionary at an ongoing exhibit. Yan graduated from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Yan'an, the cradle of the Chinese revolution in Shaanxi province, in 1938. In subsequent decades, he created a body of woodcuts which depict the fight for national independence and democracy under the leadership of the Communist Party of China in the "liberation areas" and on the front lines. Dozens of woodcuts from his Yan'an-era creations are now on show at Carving History with Woodcuts, running at CAFA's art museum until Sept 5. The exhibition also features works created after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, providing a pictorial documentation of New China's progress in socialist construction.

9:30 am-5:30 pm, Tuesday-Sunday.8 Huajiadi Nan Jie, Chaoyang district, Beijing.

Back to the future

The Beijing Exhibition Center recently transformed into a culture and art hub by turning its second floor into an art gallery. It joins hands with Beijing Contemporary Art Expo to showcase the opening exhibition, Futurism of the Past, running through Aug 31. The two symmetrical long corridors at the center's second floor were transformed into a time-traveling space for contemplation of the past and present. On show are works by more than 40 Chinese artists spanning over a century. The exhibition, which is also the themed exhibition of Beijing Contemporary Art Expo's "story" section, provides a glimpse into how artists used to envision the scenes of future in their work, and how artists today, after the realization of past imagination, address issues arising from the development of society, and picture a new future.

135 Xizhimen Wai Dajie, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-5796-0055,010-6831-6677.