Exhibitions
Jiang Qiong Er brings ancient China into dialogue with the Rome of Narbo Via
The French museum celebrates its fifth anniversary with a contemporary art tour that confronts twelve mythical creatures with Roman collections.
The Narbo Via Museum celebrates its fifth anniversary with a proposal that brings together two great cultural traditions separated by thousands of kilometers and centuries of history. From May 19, 2026 to January 3, 2027, the Franco-Chinese artist and designer Jiang Qiong Er presents Le souffle du temps , a contemporary art tour integrated into the discourse of the museum's permanent collection.
The proposal is based on an unprecedented encounter between Jiang Qiong Er's contemporary creation and the remains and objects of Roman civilization preserved in Narbo Via. The artist establishes connections between forms, materials, symbols and different temporal layers, creating a dialogue that goes beyond geographical and cultural borders.
One of the main axes of the project are twelve mythical creatures, conceived as hybrid figures emerging from the imagination of various ancient civilizations. The works take Chinese mythologies as a starting point, but also incorporate references to cultures such as Mayan, Egyptian and Indian. These creatures embody universal concepts such as courage, wisdom, brotherhood and benevolence.
Integrated within the permanent collections, the pieces enter into a direct relationship with the universe of Roman mythology. The intervention thus proposes to establish correspondences between different civilizations and raises questions that continue to be valid: what is the place of the human being within the cosmos, how we relate to the living world or where the border between the visible and the invisible is located.
Jiang Qiong Er's career is deeply linked to this desire to recover forms and knowledge from the past to reinterpret them from a contemporary perspective. Born in Shanghai, she trained in art and design at Tongji University and later at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Her practice combines plastic arts, design and research around materials, with a special focus on memory, transformation and the transmission of knowledge.
This transversal perspective was also reflected in 2009, when he co-founded with Hermès the house Shang Xia, dedicated to highlighting traditional Chinese crafts through a contemporary perspective. The project synthesized one of the concerns that permeate his work: finding a meeting point between craftsmanship, memory, matter and modernity.
The creator often draws on Chinese artistic and philosophical traditions, which she subjects to a contemporary and avant-garde reinterpretation. Her work particularly explores memory, metamorphosis and transmission, and seeks to generate spaces for dialogue between different cultures.
Her work has achieved notable international recognition. Among the institutions that have hosted her work is the Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet in Paris, where she was invited between 2024 and 2025. Her pieces are also part of the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
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