PureView® Announces the Launch of the “International Youth Art Biennale” Initiative
On December 14, 2025, the 8th Art Education Public Welfare Exhibition “3001 KM: Eight Years of the Children”, initiated by PureView®, officially opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Singapore (MOCA Singapore).
As the Singapore stop of this Asian tour exhibition, it takes paintings, letters, images and eight-year archives as carriers. It not only presents the cross-cultural dialogue between children from Dagaji Village in Yunnan, China and urban children, but also measures the distance of time, trust and growth with the power of art, injecting the most simple warmth into the contemporary art ecosystem.
3001 KM: More Than a Geographical Metaphor
The opening ceremony kicked off with a violin performance by a child, followed by the interpretation of Dr. Jie Li Elbraechter, curator and initiator of PureView®, which laid a profound emotional tone for the exhibition:
“Why 3001 KM instead of 3000?
3001 kilometers is indeed the real straight-line distance from Dagaji Village, Wenshan, Yunnan to Singapore.
But it also represents:
Over the past eight years, we have set off from Singapore to different villages time and again;
It represents the trust that has been slowly built between children, between villagers and us outsiders;
And a fact: art cannot be compressed into a ‘neat answer’.
So we deliberately retained this ‘unrounded’ distance to commemorate the parts of time and relationships that cannot be simplified.”
Dr. Jie Li Elbraechter, one of the initiators of PureView®</sup, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Since volunteers first stepped into Dagaji Village, which had no tap water in 2018, this number has been more than just a mark on the map – it records the footprints of companionship traveling between cities and mountain villages over eight years, witnesses the emotional connection between urban and rural children from strangeness to trust, and interprets the essence of art as a “borderless language”.
Over eight years, this distance has been constantly shortened by paintbrushes and letters: urban and rural children have become partners, drawing portraits of each other, living and sketching together, and accompanying each other daily online; volunteers from all over the world have picked up cameras, sorted out archives, and even brought German fountain pens and Peking Opera skills into rural classrooms……
3001 kilometers has long become a scale of growth, witnessing the two-way rush of “children seeing the world, and the world seeing children”.
Exhibition Scene: Letting Real Relationships Be Seen
Stepping into the exhibition hall of MOCA Singapore, sincerity that touches the heart can be felt everywhere.
Among the works laid out along the timeline and story line, there are both the vastness and simplicity of the mountains depicted by rural children, and the curiosity and yearning for “another kind of life” in the eyes of urban children; the immature handwriting in handwritten letters, the innocent questions in questionnaires, and the bright smiles in images together form a vivid narrative of the “Eight-Year Archives”.
The core unit of “Children Painting Children” is particularly touching. Here, portraits are no longer just artistic creations, but practices of cross-cultural understanding — each work hides the effort to “understand another life”.
In addition, the exhibition hall intuitively presents the differences in educational resources and living environments between urban and rural areas through maps, photos and texts, yet in the interaction between children, these differences are transformed into opportunities for mutual learning.
At the opening ceremony, young volunteers shared their encounters and stories in both Chinese and English, and led the audience on a tour of the works;
The Peking Opera performance brought by Cao Man is not only the cultural transmission in rural classrooms, but also the rebirth of traditional art in intergenerational communication;
The support of MOCA Singapore as an art platform and the practice of Anta Group on “the symbiosis of sports and aesthetic education” have made this exhibition more than a simple display of works, becoming a sample of the deep integration of public welfare, education and art.
Future: Biennale Continues the Original Intention of Companionship
The opening of the exhibition is also the starting point of a new journey.
At the opening ceremony, PureView® officially announced the launch of the International Youth Art Biennale. This plan will start from Singapore, continuously connect the artistic creation and exchange of young people in Asia and other regions, and may move to Vietnam in the next stage to further expand the cross-cultural children’s art network.
This plan continues the original intention of eight years of public welfare practice — not pursuing the grand narrative of “changing destiny”, but “we cannot change the world of all children, but we can light up the first window of the world for some children”.
It is worth mentioning that this exhibition is located in the core area of Singapore’s contemporary art ecosystem. There are numerous galleries and art museums around MOCA Singapore, and the children’s works are displayed alongside professional art institutions, which is itself a brave practice of “putting children into the narrative of contemporary art”.
It reminds the audience: the value of art lies not only in aesthetics, but also in connection and empowerment; the significance of public welfare lies not only in assistance, but also in equal companionship and respect.
The exhibition is open to the public for viewing.
When the distance of 3001 kilometers is dissolved by art, and eight years of time are frozen by works, this exhibition invites every viewer to enter the world of children — here, what you see is not only the traces of growth, but also the most authentic empathy and connection of human beings.
May you slow down your pace, re-feel the warmth of art in the immature brushstrokes and sincere stories, and see the light that the world treats gently.
