Citizens have opportunity to put their collections on show

Ti Gong

The second Citizens Collection exhibition organized by the Shanghai Citizens Art Festival is seeking Shanghai-style exhibits from local individual collectors.

The top 100 citizen collectors will be picked out and their files delivered to the Shanghai Citizen Art Festival.

All citizens under the age of 49 who work, study and live in Shanghai can sign up for the exhibition.

The categories cover traditional collections, public collections, overseas collections, trendy collections and alternative collections.

The judging committee of the exhibition is composed of experts from the Shanghai Collection Association, district-level collection associations and social groups.

They will give preliminary evaluations, re-evaluations and final evaluations.

The registration is open through to September 17 and people can register on the official WeChat accounts of Shanghai Citizen Art Festival or Shanghai Collection Association, or Chinese studies mobile application Yehangchuan (夜航船).

Offline registration can also be made at sites of community service platform Oriental Community Information Center (东方社区信息苑) set in different communities in the city.

So far, many young collectors have signed up.

As well as traditional collection like ceramics, jade ware and antiques, the objects include skateboards, China International Import Expo (CIIE) badges, snowboards, painted eggs, powder compacts, Mickey mouse dolls, capsule toys, animation character figures and blind boxes of toys.

Ti Gong

The first Citizen Collection Exhibition was jointly organized by the Shanghai Citizen Art Festival and the Shanghai Collection Association in 2013 with 100 local citizen collectors selected.

Their exhibits were mainly old Shanghainese items and artworks.

This year's exhibition will focus on the development of the young generation of Shanghai-style collections. It's expected that these "fashion collections" will usher in a new style for the exhibition.

"This exhibition pays more attention to the historical, cultural and social value contained in the collections, especially those recording the daily life of Shanghai people and the development and changes of the city," said Zhang Jian, president of the Shanghai Collection Association. "I believe that the public will notice the charm of the new generation of Shanghai-style collections."

As a snowboard collector, Bai Yifan has travelled to 200 ski resorts in about 20 countries in six continents.

Now he has collected 500 snowboards and opened a cafe called "Boardroom" on Jumen Road, Huangpu District, to serve coffee while displaying these snowboards, as well as promoting skiing culture.

In this collection exhibition, he will present his collection of snowboards.

Ti Gong

Jiang Lanjun, an intangible heritage inheritor of egg painting, works as a freelance designer and collects egg painting crafts from all over the world.

The painted eggs range from about 1 to 50 centimeters in height.

"Many of the eggs in my collection are kept in the storage room at home and I have no chance to show them to the public," he said.

"So I hope through this exhibition, I can show them to more people and have the latter get close to this culture."

Ti Gong