The Global Faces of Art and Culture

Using same thing humans use to express emotions as the canvas.

Culture Express is the culture show of China’s renowned CGTN. Reaching out to millions of people from all around the world on a daily basis, the program offers an aspect to the global culture and art agenda from the POV of one of the eldest cultures in the world; Chinese culture, whereas narrating the Chinese art and culture to the globe. The question was ‘what kind of a visage such program would have?

The starting point was the fact that culture and arts share the same essence; human. They are intertwined over the feelings, expressions, values and meaning of the mankind. Among the few elements, on which Western-oriented global trends and the stone-wall of Eastern cultural paradigm Chinese culture adjoin, nothing but the human itself could provide a canvas strong enough to carry out the weight of two cultural hemispheres.

The key element of the development process was to keep it as organic as possible. Although providing attraction, the buzz that digital artworks bring in couldn’t bring out the feelings embedded in depths of the different universes. Then the final medium presented itself; only oldschool handcraft could reach to such depths. Exploring various canvas options, one outweighed all the others; using the same intermediary that humans utilize to express their feelings; faces. And the fact that China has long history of face paintings -Chinese opera is one of the most ancient performances in the world- enabled us to reach to the desired background intensity to nourish the creative processes

The project has been carried out in Moscow, Russia and İstanbul Turkey under the creative direction of Çağrı Öztoksoy. World’s leading body artist ‘…’, performed in the studio of ‘…’. For each face composition a team of 20 people spent around 10 hours. Shootings took around 36 hours in total, the editing was the final touch, which brought out the human skill instead of power of the technology. All the graphic designs and art works were handcrafted to savor the organic nuances.

Both the canvas and the medium were human itself. And with them, faces that tell the essential union of two hemispheres of the culture world were formed. Thanks to our collaborators La Passion and guiding and detailed insights of CGTN leadership, Culture Express found it face.