In 2017, Artmia Foundation initiated the support program for artists from the East Asia region: EACA (East Asian Contemporary Art). 

As a Beijing based, non-commercial institution founded by Korean philanthropist, the foundation has always been concerned with the East Asian cultural sphere. The foundation has held numerous exhibitions of Chinese, Japanese and Korean artists, and endeavored to let people know the artists through diverse, supportive activities. We also travelled to various cities in East Asia together with friends of the foundation and appreciated historical affinity of the region. East Asia has divided into a few countries now, but we recognized that the individuals and societies of the region share various commonalities such as philosophy, religion, and language as ever. EACA is a core program of the foundation as well as a comprehensive outgrowth based on such past experiences.

Based on YiJing (藝境), ideological basis of the foundation, EACA seeks to support the art of our time and our space. Artists who have an insight into ‘now’ and ‘here’ along with creativity and talent have been selected by the rigorous appraisal of selection committee members every year. Also, the artists were provided unique opportunities to become participants of exhibitions and artist-in-residence program that the foundation organized. By continuing the EACA support program, the foundation hopes to disclose a new stage of East Asian contemporary art.

We believe that the exploration of East Asian contemporary art can be one of the critical perceptive horizons to understand ourselves in this convoluted era. Ultimately, we wish all of us to appreciate art in life and life in art and to enjoy the beauty of life through art

Artmia Foundation held "EACA Special Exhibition : Uniformity of Ununiformity" at the art space of Hainan Chengmei Hospital.The exhibition features over 14 artworks by  six EACA artists from the collection of Artmia Foundation, exploring  East Asian subjectivity and individual identity through contemporary art. We hope to reconstruct the artistic foundation of East Asian contemporary art through interpreting the commonalities and differences of art, enrichening our lives and the world with a "beauty in their own way” of thinking.  Ultimately, art grants eternal meanings to our finite lives.

EACA 2022 -  Choi Sujin Solo Exhibition “Rainbow Letter ”

Artmia Foundation was invited to open a public welfare art space in the newly completed Hainan Chengmei Hospital. This may be the first art gallery opened in a hospital in mainland China. On March 25, Art Space welcomed its first exhibition Choi Sujin Solo Exhibition “Rainbow Letter ”. With this exhibition, we want more people to feel the power of art itself to comfort and heal the soul. Under the theme of rainbow, the exhibition is the artist’s  covenants, nurtured in the rain clouds — now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  May we all meet our own rainbow within.

EACA 2019—ARRAY

Duration: 16th October -16th November 2019

Location:  Seoul, Korea

EACA (East Asian Contemporary Art) is Artmia’s core program to promote East Asian art and culture.  Based on Artmia’s central ideal “YIJING” (Castalia), EACA seeks to support the artistic development in the region right here, right now.  After four months of rigorous selection,  in March 2019, three selection committee  members,  Philip TINARI, CEO and Director of UCCA, Carol Yinghua LU, Director of Inside-out Art Museum, and  Lee Daehyung,  former Art Director, Hyundai Motor Company, chose eight artists with unique perspectives and creative talents from China, Korea, and Japan: Masaya CHIBA (b. 1980)，CHOI Sujin (b. 1986)，HU Wei (b. 1989)，Jihyun JUNG (b. 1986)，Inbai KIM (b. 1978)，KWON Yongju (b. 1977)，MA Haijiao (b. 1990)，SUN Peimao (b. 1991).

On 16th October, in collaboration with Gallery Baton that is equally supportive of young Korean artists, Artmia will host the EACA 2019 Annual Exhibition in Seoul, Korea.  In a complex and dynamical historical structure, in this mass-production era that is in want of spiritual wealth, how can we preserve our individual identities?

Humans do not exist in general conceptions.  Rather than being more valuable than individual expressions, generality is merely an abstraction of them.  More than showcasing a certain artwork or value, Array strives to present the contemporary thought embedded in different yet interconnected expressions.  Among the seemingly self-evident heritages of East Asian history and culture, we aim to delineate the connections and differences of today and explore

individuality among generality.  In a sense, instead of it being a mere abstraction of infinitely many individuals, the understanding of the collective relies on an epistemology that treats each

individual as a whole.  Generality is not a static external description but a dynamic process of internal intersection, the purpose of which is to free  individuals and allow them to self-actualise, instead of unifying or standardising our values. Therefore, the generality we seek lies in the differences we have — “to connect thousands of individuals without losing any portion of uniqueness in each individual.”

Array considers the eight artists at EACA and their work as a whole to emphasise the real-life rule “what we have in common is that we are all different.”  There is not a single truth or perspective in reality.  Diverse experiences shape diverse individuals, and individuals can only achieve self-actualisation in being different and unique.

Through continuously exploring, promoting, and supporting East Asian art, we hope to inspire people’s imaginative and intellectual developments in the fusions of human subjectivity and universal objectivity and in the exploration that aims to find the equilibrium between stability and change.  We hope to formulate the intersections between perception and reason and create a perspective that both gazes outward at the world and inward at oneself, by shifting between the creator and observer, the individual and the collective.  In East Asia, a geographical space with a rich history, we hope to find a certain longstanding yet marginalised mentality and life attitude, and induce the East Asian axiom.  Art grants eternal meanings to our finite lives.

Beijing Forum · Castalian Symposium

In 2019, Artmia Foundation was invited to become a partner of Peking University’s Beijing Forum, and hosts the annual Beijing Forum Art Panel - "Castalian Symposium".

"Yijing" is a concept created by Dr.Mia Jin, the founder of Artmia Foundation. It takes the insights toward nature and life contained in the I Ching as life wisdom and pursues the spiritual realm that sees contemporary art as a medium. 

Castalian Springs, considered sacred by ancient Greek priestesses, is where Roman poets came to consult the Delphic Oracle and draw poetic inspiration.

Castalian Symposium, too, offers a place for members to externalize their thoughts on art and meet kindred souls with the same passion for art and art collections. Artworld has set sail again on the world-renowned academic platform of the Beijing Forum, exploring East Asian concepts and principles from a scholarly perspective, striving to establish East Asian subjectivity. We devote to engaging with experts from all over the world in the art world and all walks of life to conduct in-depth discussions and exchanges across fields, disciplines, and cultures, while continuing to explore art education, and its significance and possibilities in higher education.

Beijing Forum 2021 Castalian symposium

Narcissus looks for echo：Reconstructing the Context of Life

Time : 31 December 2021, 7pm

Form: online panel

Platform: Bilibili, Zai Art

The ups and downs of the global pandemic in 2021 have a profound impact on our lives. This year, Beijing Forum with the theme of "The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All — Rising to Meet New Challenges: One World, One Future" advocated that all mankind should share the faith of common destiny to meet common challenges, and defend common interests, in the accelerated process of evolution of great changes unseen in a century.

The Art Panel of the 2021 Beijing Forum -- The Castalian Symposium experimentally breaks the traditional way of speeches and discussions in the previous online forums, invited young film director Li Hongyuan to present it in the form of an art documentary with the theme of Narcissus looks for echo：Reconstructing the Context of Life, and continues to discover the East Asian axiom through art.

We interviewed artists, through thinking about individual status hoping to focus on the groups and societies they belong to or represent, from the perspective of future orientation and common development, in the real world where clashes are intensified; We search empathy and consensus shared by all humans, explore the direction and method of the ideal world from self-transcendence to equality and mutual benefit, and provide some possible developmental paths for globalization on the basis of self-improvement.

Beijing Forum 2020 Castalian Symposium

Uniformity of Ununiformity: A New Vision of Caring for Society and Self

Time : 28, 29, 30 November  2020,  8pm

Form: online panel

Platform: Bilibili, Zai Art

This year’s Castalian Symposium took "Uniformity of Ununiformity: A New Vision of Caring for Society and Self" as the theme, with 8 well-known scholars, artists and curators from around the world, including artists, curators and public figures: Fan Di'an, President, China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Chairman, Chinese Artists Association; Chloe Kim, Founder, T&C Foundation; Professor Iain Robertson, Head of Art Business, Sotheby's Institute of Art London; Daehyung Lee, Independent Curator, Korea; Carol Yinghua Lu, Director, Beijing Middle Art Museum; Heisook Kim, President, Ewha Womans University, South Korea; Sir Antony Gormley, a distinguished British sculptor and artist and Seunghye Sun, Director, Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea, all participated in the online discussion.

The Castalian Symposium hopes to use the forum to discuss the particularity of various fields and achieve mutual integration between the subjectivity of the individual human beings and the objectivity of fixed space. People are pursuing dynamic balance and exploring continuously. In the process of change, the bonds of equality and diversity inspire people's new imagination and problem awareness, driving people to finally find a new perspective to care for the world and themselves.

Beijing Forum 2019 Castalian Symposium

East Asia Now: In Between Locality and Internationality

Time : 2nd November  2019,  2pm

Venue: Four-Season Parlor at Peking University Hall

On November 2nd, 2019, the special event of the 16th Beijing Forum, Castalian Spring, co-organized by Beijing Artmia Foundation and Beijing Forum, was held at the Four-Season Parlor of the Peking University Hall.

Park In-kook, Chairman of  The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, KFAS, Yan Jun, Secretary General of Peking University Beijing Forum, Chloe H. Kim, Founder of T&C Foundation of Korea, and Mia Jin, Founder of Beijing Artmia Foundation, delivered opening speeches.

The theme of the art panel was "East Asia Now: In Between Locality and Internationality", bringing together senior and respected scholars and practitioners from the fields of culture and art in China, Japan and South Korea.

Fan Di'an, President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, "East Asian Art: Generating New Power from Traditional Contemporary Transformation"; Heisook Kim, President of Ewha Women's University, South Korea, "Art in East and West"; Peng Feng, Dean of the School of Arts at Peking University, "Copies and University Art Museums in China"; Yukie Kamiya, Gallery Director of the Japanese Society in New York , "Examine East Asia from Global Periphery: A Case Study through Shanghai Biennial 2018"; Daehyung Lee, Independent Curator from South Korea, "Why Arts Matters in the 4th Industrial Revolution"; Lisa Liu, Curator and Vice Researcher of National Art Museum of China, "Multiple Vision of the Asian New Art"; Philip Tinari, CEO and Director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, "UCCA: Building a Global Art Institution for Beijing and Beyond"; Carol Lu Yinghua, Director of the Inside-out Art Museum, "Asia as Fieldwork”.

By discovering, promoting and supporting East Asian art, Castalian Spring focuses on East Asia. In the hope to help the mutual integration of the subjectivity and the fixed spatial objectivity in the fluid individuals, in the pursuit of dynamic balance and exploration of changes, it stimulates new imaginations and problematic consciousness, forming an interplay of perceptions and thinking between creators and viewers, individuals and groups, so to find new perspectives on the world and the self, explore the meaning and value of East Asian thought and civilization, and promote the development of contemporary art in East Asia.

Chinese artist Xu Longsen used a huge ink painting to create an artistic parlor for the forum, and the integration of vivid visual art into an academic forum was also a highlight.