I was fortunate to secure an internship in the Art Department at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. This experience has been invaluable, offering me more time to prepare for my thesis, “Chinese Porcelain in Colonial Mexico,” by deepening my exposure to Chinese porcelain and giving me the opportunity to research innovations in porcelain techniques and their applications.

At the Centre, my first task was assisting an exhibition titled Revitalizing Craftsmanship, an exhibition in collaboration with Tsinghua University's Art Academy. This exhibition highlighted traditional Chinese crafts such as ceramics, lacquerware, glass, textiles, and metalwork, while also incorporating contemporary techniques and innovations. Many of the pieces were created by professors and students together.

My role involved a wide range of tasks, including leading exhibition tours for visiting guests, assisting with the setup and take-down of the exhibition, writing and translating exhibition introductions and descriptions, maintaining order in the gallery, compiling audience feedback through surveys, and editing the exhibition catalogs.  I also had the opportunity to assist with visits by foreign dignitaries, including the president of the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Russia and Brazil’s former president and the head of the Development Bank. I provided translation services for them in both English and Spanish.

Through these tours, I gained deeper insights into traditional Chinese craftsmanship, particularly ceramics. One of the works I frequently introduced was Wind: Summer and Faintness by Tsinghua professor Liu Runfu (刘润福). This series of ceramic pieces incorporates natural elements like flowers and mushrooms, using traditional techniques to convey an Eastern aesthetic. The delicate depiction of nature, combined with the pure white of the clay, creates a visual effect reminiscent of a breeze sweeping over a summer meadow, with everything in full bloom. 

The work also evokes a sense of resilience, as though the flowers and mushrooms, despite being blown by the wind, stubbornly strive to stand tall again. Each piece is handcrafted and assembled, and since the work is an installation, it looks slightly different every time it is exhibited due to the reassembly process.

This experience has made me reflect on the evolution of ceramics—how it has transformed from utilitarian objects like bowls and teapots into art objects admired for their sculptural beauty. In the early days of Chinese porcelain’s export to Europe and South America, its decoration was rich with content and storylines, with iconography playing a key role. In contemporary times, the exploration of porcelain as a material has taken precedence, rather than simply treating it as a medium for artistic expression.

During this internship, the greatest support came from Professor Beatrice Kitzinger’s junior seminar (ART 400). In her class, we discussed Professor Irene Small's “Ready-Constructible Color” in Hélio Oiticica Folding the Frame which left a lasting impression on me—particularly this line: "Color is a constructive process associated with phenomenal emergence. But it is also a corpus, a being with a structure and behavior of its own." I found that this understanding of color also applies well to ceramics—a constructive material this is also "a corpus itself."

Ceramics possess a high degree of malleability, and in Liu's work, they take on the forms of nature’s growth, embodying the shapes and behaviors of plants. This approach extends the material’s possibilities, showcasing ceramics as both the medium for creating the artwork and an artwork in its own right.

With these reflections in mind, I am now involved in organizing the Centre’s next two exhibitions, which are equally unique. One will showcase the costumes of Peking Opera masters Mei Lanfang and Mei Baojiu, and the other will feature paintings and calligraphy by members of the Chinese Armed Police Force.