The 4th Chongqing Urban Art Festival “Blooming June” Kicks Off

On May 26, the opening ceremony of "Blooming June," the 4th Chongqing Urban Art Festival and the SCFAI 2026 Graduation Works Exhibition Art Tour, along with the "Museum Night" Crossover Visual Show, was held at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. This performance, blending traditional art, contemporary creation, and digital technology, kicked off the city's annual art extravaganza.

The event

Photo courtesy of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute

As a signature event of "Blooming June," "Museum Night" has been constantly innovating and upgrading since its launch in 2021. This year's edition, themed "Beyond Light Years," features three distinctive sections, transforming the art museum into a cross-disciplinary art theater for dialogue between the past and the present, and allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the unique charm of art that transcends time and space.

Graduates deliver a spectacular performance 

Photo courtesy of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute

The event featured a dazzling array of live performances: the dance "Dream of the Silk Road" showcased the city's openness and vitality; the erhu piece "Galloping War-Horses" expressed deep patriotic sentiments; and the Peking opera performance "Dongfang Jingyun (Oriental Peking Opera Charm)" fully demonstrated the profound heritage of this national treasure. In addition, previous graduates performed songs adapted in the Miao language, breathing new life into classics.

The fashion graduation show blended Ba-Shu culture, sculptural aesthetics, and digital technology, using clothing as a medium to unfold a visual dialogue on art, the body, and contemporary aesthetics. The light and shadow show was built upon a "collective portrait" distilled from tens of millions of pixels of this graduation season, breaking the boundary between image and physical space, and gathering the youthful vitality of all graduates in an interplay of light and shadow where the virtual and the real intertwine.

On May 27, the SCFAI Graduation Exhibition themed "Ignite" officially opened. The exhibition brings together more than 10,000 artworks in over 2,000 sets by over 2,100 undergraduate and postgraduate students, on display simultaneously across the two campuses, and runs through June 28. To provide visitors with an immersive experience, the school has for the first time introduced a "Night Museum" event — the Art Museum on Huxi Campus and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing on Huangjueping Campus have adopted nighttime opening hours, complemented by complimentary guided tours, a maker carnival, and other engaging nighttime activities.

Exhibition view 

Photo courtesy of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute

During the exhibition period, the two campuses of SCFAI are fully open to the public in an orderly manner. Citizens can enter the campus by scanning their ID cards or through online reservations, while compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as foreign nationals, can register with valid identification documents. Faculty and students have jointly created a fun animated film titled "Finding the Path in June, or Youth," which features a campus stray cat as the protagonist, guiding everyone on a virtual tour of the campus.

Exhibited artworks 

Photo courtesy of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute

From the light and shadow show to the outstanding graduation works, this year's "Blooming June" transcends artistic boundaries, realizing the integration and coexistence of tradition and modernity, craftsmanship and creativity. With its rich artistic achievements, SCFAI paints a vibrant picture of Chongqing's cultural development.