"Exile is not first and foremost a tearing apart, but a setting forth."
(« L’exil n’est pas d’abord un déchirement, mais une mise en route. »)
— François Cheng, the first Asian-born member of the Académie Française
François Cheng likened himself to a “ferryman” and dedicated his life to building bridges between Chinese and French cultures, between Eastern and Western thought, transforming displacement into opportunities for creation and dialogue. Guided by his spirit, this exhibition invites viewers to embark on a journey of contemplation on migration, adaptation, and transformation.
Setting forth is where this exhibition begins.
In the 1970s, a flock of parrots from the tropics unexpectedly made Paris their home. Initially strangers, they gradually adapted, multiplied, and eventually became a vivid touch of color in the cityscape. They retained their distinctive hues while quietly blending into their new surroundings—much like many Chinese and Asian immigrants in France, who, while safeguarding their cultural roots, have found belonging and created value in new soil, quietly becoming “ferrymen” who connect two or more cultures.
This is a silent form of fusion—not dissolution, but coexistence; not forgetting one’s homeland, but redefining what it means to belong in a new latitude and longitude.
This also mirrors the experience of many Chinese and Asian artists in France. Carrying with them the visual DNA, aesthetic habits, and spiritual lineages of the East, they enter a strikingly different artistic context. Confronted with differences, they do not erase themselves. Instead, they discover a unique creative power in the encounter—just as parrots retain their bright plumage against Paris’s gray skies, their art blossoms in foreign soil with colors that traverse boundaries.
This exhibition brings together ten artists from A2Z Gallery: An Xiaotong (France)、 Aung Ko (Myanmar)、 Danhôo (France) 、 Du Zhenjun (China) 、 Emeric Chantier (France) 、 Florian Song Nguyen (France) 、 Gaël Davrinche (France) 、 Jihee Han (South Korea) 、 Kwak Soo Young (South Korea) 、 Li Donglu (China) 、 Laurence Graffensttaden (France) 、 Laurent Lu (France) 、 Sepand Danesh (France) 、 Shiori Eda (Japan) 、 Zhao Duan (France). Hailing from diverse regions and cultural backgrounds, their creations are like the wings of parrots — bearing memories of their origins while unfurling and vibrating in the air of a foreign land, undertaking a quiet yet profound cultural crossing.
Their canvases are both laboratories and habitats; sites of cultural collision and testimonies to self-reconstruction. Paint is not merely material but a carrier of memory; brushstrokes are not only technique but traces of attitude. Each work is a concrete act of “ferrying” — safely and creatively transporting one cultural experience to the shore of another’s understanding.
These paintings do not speak, yet they tell the deepest stories of migration. Where layers of paint accumulate, cultural memory is deposited; where brushstrokes intersect, aesthetic languages converse. Each painting is a miniature crossing—from one shore to another, from tradition to contemporaneity, from East to West, ultimately arriving at a spiritual homeland that transcends geography.
In curating this exhibition, we do not aim to present a finished outcome of “fusion. ” Instead, we wish to show the dynamic process of “fusion in motion. ” These artists continue to explore how each stroke of the brush can remain rooted in their personal cultural lineage while growing freely in the vast fields of the world’s art.
