Project Introduction
The Beauty & Beast is a national key-area Dachuang program from Duke Kunshan University. The team is committed to holding a series of pop-up art exhibitions and related art activities in public spaces. The team’s original intention was to target niche, youthful, social, and online artists and all ordinary people who love art creations. This project will mainly hold physical art exhibitions for these groups, aiming to provide them with an open and inclusive platform. It is used to showcase their outstanding works to the public and let the world of art hear the voices of emerging forces. In addition, through various innovative exhibition forms, they strive to find the critical balance between pure art and commerce, conduct experimental art curations to break people’s stereotypes about art, and finally popularize contemporary art in modern society.
Team Members
Qingyang He
Class of 2024 Media Arts Major
Founder of Beauty & Beast Pop-Up Art Exhibition
Team Leader and Exhibition Coordinator
Tianyu Zhang
Class of 2024 Global Cultural Studies Major
Responsible for Clarification of Exhibition Concepts
Yilin Xu
Class of 2024 Global Cultural Studies Major
Advocacy and Outreach
Responsible for Clarification of Exhibition Concepts
Shiwen Xu
Class of 2024 Media Arts Major
Advocacy and Outreach
Operating Team IP and Maintaining Customer Channels
Siyu Wang
Class of 2025
Curatorial Assistant
Yufei Li
Class of 2024 Media Arts Major
Generating Curatorial Plans
Yutong Quan
Class of 2024 Economics Major
Financial Management
Responsible for Team Income and Expenditure Reports
Kaiqi Wu
Class of 2024 Media Arts Major
Providing technical support to the team in terms of project implementation, photographic records, and post-publications
Ruohan Wang
Class of 2024 Global Cultural Studies Major
Program Planning Assistant
Jiantong Zhang
Class of 2025
Curatorial Assistant
Hanxi Bao
Class of 2025
Curatorial Assistant
Project Experience
What’s your initial motivation for participating Dii？
When talking about the original intention of participating in the Dii program, Qingyang said that she signed up for the Dii project because she took Prof. Liqi’s SOSC110 – Innovation and Creativity when she first entered the university, which gained her greatly in innovation. During the course, Liqi taught students a lot of theoretical knowledge and design thinking about entrepreneurship and innovation and encouraged them to try and put their ideas into practice bravely. At Liqi’s recommendation, she signed up to participate in the 2020 Dii project’s primary selection and explained to the audience that day the outline of the project to build a mobile art museum run by art students. To her surprise, just after stepping down, several interested classmates came to her to inquire about the project details. Liqi also communicated with her several times and confirmed how to turn this interesting idea into Dii’s official project. Since then, Qingyang has officially embarked on the road of college student entrepreneurship.
In addition, Qingyang is very grateful to Dii for its support of professional skills and funding. She mentioned that Dii often invites well-known leaders of major domestic and foreign companies and elites from industries to provide entrepreneurial guidance and experience sharing. In addition, one-to-one customized group consultation was provided, and the teachers would always come up with customized solutions for Qingyang’s team according to the specific situations, providing them with a lot of practical guidance, which benefited them a lot. The InE department also organized multiple school-enterprise alliance activities for every Dii team, which can help student entrepreneurial teams communicate, learn from past experiences, and promote cooperation with more mature companies in the market. From those, she gathered a lot of meaningful comments and insights, which guide the team’s follow-up development, expansion, and gradual connection with the market. In the end, it was with the first funding provided by Dii that they were able to officially expand beyond the campus in the second half of 2021, encouraging them to overcome various difficulties in the start-up stage and continue to operate until today.
What is the most attractive thing about Dii？
First is the objectively sufficient allocation of various resources. Compared with other commercial projects on the market that support college students’ entrepreneurship, starting from the school’s entrepreneurship and innovation department and starting the entrepreneurial journey is a safe and bold-enough idea for her. With these existing resource bonuses, even if the startup fails in the end, it will be a valuable learning experience in itself.
The second is sufficiently customized help from a subjective perspective. At each stage of the project, when various difficulties appear, Liqi, Frank, and other fellow interns in the Dii project will do their best to help and encourage their team, so that she has a kind of project that has always been cared and trusted by everyone. The whole Dii project team takes care of every entrepreneurial idea like a big family, and there is a strong sense of belonging to it.
Will participating in Dii program affect your study？
She believes that the experience of participating in Dii made her understand how to balance her studies with entrepreneurial work. In the process of studying and practicing simultaneously, she has gradually found a life direction and career plan that she wants to try in the future. As far as the project itself is concerned, because the pop-up art exhibition has the characteristics of strong fluidity and large space for creativity, in the process of physical exhibition, the actual situation is often inconsistent with the assumption, and it is necessary to prepare on-site or come up with reasonable solutions, Coping measures, with such an experience, she found herself gradually learning in her life the abilities to stay calm under difficult situations and to plan and think in an organized,well-thought-out, and realistic manner.
