2025 Contemporary Art of the New Born

-Atlas of Empathy

The Paris-based gallery Sol de Paris presented the second edition of Contemporary Art of the New Born in 2025 at the Carrousel du Louvre. The exhibition showcased an impressively diverse range of works, spanning oil painting, installation, video, and print media.

As Sol de Paris’s second presentation at the Carrousel this year, the gallery demonstrated a heightened sense of curatorial confidence and refinement. The Louvre, as a world-renowned temple of art, lends the exhibition an unparalleled prestige. Located directly beneath the iconic Louvre Pyramid, the Carrousel du Louvre serves as a confluence of three major visitor flows. The opening event was remarkably grand, attracting more than 3,000 visitors in total.

Intriguingly, on the final day of the exhibition — October 19th at 9 a.m. — the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, celebrated for its collection of royal jewelry, fell victim to a robbery. Within just seven minutes, the perpetrators escaped with nine historically significant national treasures, an incident that sent shockwaves across the world and once again thrust the Louvre into the global spotlight.

At the moment the news broke, our artworks and participating artists were present on-site, witnessing this extraordinary and unsettling moment in history firsthand. In the current economic climate, high-value artworks have once again emerged as highly coveted instruments of circulation and exchange, underscoring the complex relationship between art, value, and power in today’s global art world.

The exhibition brought together a diverse group of artists from across the globe. Among them were three artists from the United Kingdom: Yiwen, presenting her exquisite porcelain collage works; Xiaoze, showcasing vintage-inspired paintings and installations; and Lin, with her charming and whimsical illustrations. From China, three artists also took part: Yuewan, known for her mixed-media paintings; Lihua, whose practice spans crayon drawings and oil-painted landscapes; and Dr. Isabel Tou, who presented a series of moving oil paintings drawn from her personal experiences. There was also Momo Li, an artist with a richly diverse background, who created a series of avant-garde video works that added a distinctly contemporary pulse to the exhibition.

Curators Hongqian Zhang and Hanyue jointly expressed that it was their great honor to collaborate with such imaginative and thought-provoking artists. Prior to the exhibition’s opening, several artists contributed creative ideas to the installation process. Among them, Xiaoze made particularly clever use of a central column within her booth, positioning her mixed-media installation The Great Table Escape right at the entrance. For this work, she commissioned half of a table and half of a wine glass, constructing the illusion of a dining table emerging from the wall, seamlessly blending painting and sculpture in a witty, surreal gesture.

ID T7.16 by Momo Mengyi Li is a sci-fi visual narrative exploring the destiny of human emotion in a technologically over-saturated future. The story, told through the memories of a surviving human heart on Planet N31, traces humanity’s downfall—its quest for the “perfect relationship” leading to extinction as companion robots replace genuine affection. The protagonist, 831, a master impersonator, must mimic the non-human to save what remains of humanity. Juxtaposing the sacred “human heart” with the illusion of the “companion robot,” the work probes love, death, identity, and the fragile meaning of authenticity in the post-human era—asking whether, in seeking comfort and control, we have forfeited our humanity itself.

Among the most playful and childlike works in the exhibition were Lin Cheng’s four small illustrations, printed on cotton paper, each no larger than the size of a palm. Viewers were invited to lean in close, discovering the delicate textures and subtle charm of the pieces. With lively lines and vibrant color blocks, the works evoke the warmth of festive greeting cards—each brushstroke revealing the artist’s spontaneous imagination.

Yuewan Chen’s healing series: Purifier and Rooting and Entangling , on the other hand, combines multiple media and materials, resulting in surfaces rich with transformation. During the creative process, organic materials underwent oxidation, deepening the colors and textures. Curator Hongqian Zhang encouraged Yuewan to present the works in their altered form, emphasizing that the natural evolution of the materials is itself part of the artistic process.

Both Yuewan and Lin share a gentle, uplifting sensibility—their works radiate a quiet purity and ease that seem to soothe the viewer’s heart.

Dr. Isabel Tou, a Taiwanese artist with a medical background in rehabilitation and sports medicine, began her artistic practice during the pandemic. Through acrylic painting, she merges her clinical insight with the philosophy of the Chinese Five Elements, exploring the relationship between the human body, nature, and the cosmos. This time she brought the the painting Lung and Metal in the Five Elements.

In this exhibition, we also encounter traditional art forms deeply influenced by Chinese artistic heritage. For instance, Shen Shao'an's Lacquer Art, represented by a series of vessels, employs time-honored Chinese techniques and intangible cultural heritage crafts that are now at risk of being discontinued. Similarly, Lihua Zhang's landscape painting V80-9.3 reflects a profound connection to Chinese cultural traditions. Through her landscape composition, she not only engages with Soviet history but also reveals an aesthetic rooted in Chinese literati painting—emphasizing spiritual resonance over mere representation.

Further demonstrating her versatility, Lihua has also displayed four small crayon-on-canvas works on the exterior wall of the gallery, titled Mountain and Flower. These pieces, with their creamy, delicate texture, evoke the subtle elegance of Chinese ink wash painting while earning admiration from numerous visitors.

In reflecting upon this multifaceted exhibition, we are reminded that art remains both a witness to history and a profound expression of human vulnerability and aspiration. Against the backdrop of an unexpected Louvre robbery that blurred the boundaries between spectacle and reality, the works on view—whether rooted in traditional craft, digital futurism, or healing symbolism—collectively asked what endures in a world of flux. Here, in the shadow of one of the world’s most iconic museums, contemporary creation met timeless questions of value, memory, and identity. This exhibition did not merely display art—it framed a delicate, urgent conversation between past and future, presence and loss, the tangible and the transcendent.