THE NY20+ ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAM, BASHU, CHINA
WHEN NOVEMBER 2026
WHERE Bashu, China
Elena Pelosi’s project “Time capsules” won and was selected as part of the NY20+ Residency in Bashu, China, as a part of the Venice Arte Laguna Residency Program 2025.
ABOUT TIME CAPSULES: AN INTERACTIVE SOUND INSTALLATION
The project draws inspiration from the Ba–Shu scripts, three undeciphered writing systems found on bronzeware from the ancient kingdoms of Ba and Shu in the Sichuan Basin (5th–4th centuries BC). Discovered on weapons, seals, and ritual vessels, these pictographic signs form a silent archive of Bashu civilization, where meaning is lost but visual memory endures.
Through research-led material exploration, the work uses local clay, stone powders, bamboo fibers, natural pigments, and recycled fragments from Chengdu’s urban landscape to create sculptural forms engraved with reinterpretations of Ba–Shu symbols. Some marks appear as voids, others as raised reliefs, evoking absence and survival.
The project bridges archaeological memory and contemporary material practice, transforming unreadable language into tactile vessels of cultural continuity.
ABOUT NY20+
Situated in Chengdu, Sichuan, NY20+ is an art promotion organization supported by Nongyuan Culture, in committed to international art and culture exchanges and overseas projects.Nongyuan Culture has three themed art Zones covering about 141,000 square meters in total. Based on Zone A and Zone B, NY20+ conducts international Artist Residency Program, exhibition planning, school-enterprise cooperation, non-for-profit art platform and other programs, and aims at strengthening interaction and cooperation among art institutions and colleges, artists, designers, art teachers and students, as well as art lovers from different countries and regions, so as to promote the dissemination, collision and development of various cultures, and realize the virtuous circle of an international art and culture ecology.
Artist Residency Program, launched in 2008, is characterized by Chengdu and Bashu Culture for resident artists to do art research, experiment, creation, communication and display, as well as committed to make a diverse, interactive, creative and continual international artist in residence program. Based on Nongyuan’s large-scale Art & Nature Ecology and over 200 Chengdu-based artists, it initiates the Rubik’s Cube Project, Migrant Birds Project, etc. to create an international art tribe where diverse arts and cultures flourish.