Submitted by urci on
January 23, 2014 the Confucius Institute at the University of Regina, Canada held Chinese paper-cuts exhibition. Wang Xingping, the consul general of Chinese general consulate at Calgary and Vianne Timmons, the president of the University of Regina did the ribbon cutting together. To enrich the Chinese New Year celebration, this exhibition will last till the Spring Festival, when faculties and students from the University of Regina, local high school and elementary school will visit the show.
The annual spring festival is a day which the Chinese people all over the world celebrate. The paper-cuts and window decoration in the Chinese folk, especially in the north, has a glorious history. Social life in northern China’s countryside is simple, the loess cave dwelling and the gray courtyard landscape are solemn and respectful. At holidays or newly married jubilation, people paste beautiful paper-cuts on the windows, the wall, the gate and the lantern to embellish the holiday atmosphere. Paper-cut window decoration has a special esthetic sense using the reversed light, snow light penetrated from outside often generates a kind of warm feeling. The reason that paper-cut can be long-time wide spreading is that it embraces happiness and auspicious future. The limitation of countryside culture, adverse circumstance on invasions of natural disasters, stimulated people’s desire to happy life. People implore having ample food and clothing, flourishing population, healthy longevity, good luck in everything. This kind of simple desire was then expressed through paper-cuts.
Flower-and-bird, character figures, the Chinese zodiac, folklores and operas are the rich themes of paper-cuts. Fish hunting, the shepherd boy and the propitious are the eternal topics. The paper-cut pattern design, originates from the primitive folk esthetic idea. As the primitive artistic carrier, the paper-cut has the prominent performance in the aspect of exaggeration and distortion. Since the eyes are the most expressive, most works have carried on exaggeration to human’s and animal’s eyes. The sense of pray for life has entrusted exuberant vigor for paper-cuts. Paper-cut creators are always harboring the firm optimistic faith and hope, towards abundance and happiness. The paper-cut express precisely their ideals to create happy life. Through paper-cut, people fictionalized glorious images to console their own souls, made widely known that the humanity is able to conquer the nature with great creativity. That is to inspire courage of people to struggle to establish their ideal world. The paper-cut is a culture created by various Chinese nationalities through accumulation of generations in the labor production process. Its unique local characteristics had reflected the ordinary working people's life and the esthetic appeal, are inheriting the artistic feature and the national spirit of Chinese culture.
