Balance 平衡

The concept of Zhongyong 中庸 in Chinese is very stimulating. It is often translated as the golden mean in English. I discovered it through my research work with Tian Xiaowen. Learning how to balance everything we say and do alone and/or together with others is an important life-long educational goal. It is life-long because it cannot and should never stop. Balancing our emotions, attitudes, knowledges, relationships, activities should be on everyone’s daily agenda. Balancing here means working with others, pulling and pushing again and again and not accepting to be pushed or pulled in one direction only, thus promoting Zhongyong. The painting represents an attempt at portraying how people balance (with) each other. The flowers on the ground symbolize the hundreds of voices that influence the two characters in trying to do a balancing act. Interestingly, our bodies mostly remain in a straight line when we walk, sit, lay… I wish that they could swing as we engage with others, reflecting the balancing processes that we attempt with each other. 

“中庸”这个概念在中文中非常引人入胜，它通常被翻译为英文的“golden mean” （黄金中庸）。我是通过和田小文的研究工作发现这个概念的。学习如何单独或与他 人一起平衡我们所说和所做的一切是一个重要的终身教育目标。这是一个终身目标， 因为它不能也不应该停止。平衡我们的情绪、态度、知识、关系、活动应该是每个人 的日常议程。这里的平衡意味着与他人合作，反复推拉，而不是只接受一个方向上的 推动或拉动，从而促进中庸之道。这幅画试图描绘人们如何相互平衡。地上的花朵象 征着影响两个角色尝试进行平衡动作的数百种声音。有趣的是，当我们走路、坐着、 躺着时，我们的身体大多保持直线。我希望当我们与他人互动时，它们能够摆动，反 映出我们试图相互进行的平衡过程。

BIODATA - 艺术家简介

A renowned scholar in the field of intercultural communication and education, Fred Dervin (Chinese name: 文德 Wende) is also an artist. He holds two PhDs (Sorbonne University in Paris and University of Turku, Finland), is a full professor and PhD supervisor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.  Dervin also holds several distinguished and visiting professorships in Australia, Canada, China, Luxembourg, Malaysia and Sweden, as well as in other Finnish universities. Dervin has published internationally on questions of identity, interculturality and mobility/migration (over 150 articles and 80 books). His interest in art began when he was a teenager and has continued to grow over the decades. Over the past decade, he has produced artworks in China and Finland to showcase his scientific ideas. His commitment to the arts has also influenced his personal research (e.g. the benefits of arts education for intercultural communication). For decades he has collected and specialized in Finnish art from the mid-20th century and since 2015 he has been actively involved in producing his own art in relation to his research work. In his 2022 book entitled Interculturality in Fragments: A Reflexive Approach (Springer), he included 10 of his works of art to stimulate his readers to think beyond words about intercultural communication and education. He is just about to publish a book on art and interculturality in education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Dervin is interested in the complexity of depicting faces in his art work by using different techniques. Interestingly, the Finnish word "face", "kasvot", always appears in the plural, which piqued his curiosity about the human face. This interest also comes from his scientific research on identity and intercultural communication, as well as his experience of living in different parts of the world.

文德是世界跨文化教育领域的知名学者，同时还是一位优秀的艺术家。他拥有法国索邦大学和芬兰图尔库大学两所世界知名古老院校的博士学位。现担任芬兰赫尔辛基大学的终身教授及博士生导师，同时还在世界各国及地区担任荣誉教授和客座教授。他发表了超过150篇学术性文章和80余部学术专著，探讨关于身份、跨文化交流与教育、流动迁移等社会问题。他对艺术的兴趣始于青少年时期，经过多年的积累形成了自己独特的艺术风格。在过去的十几年中，他在中国与芬兰这两个他热爱的土地上创作了许多带有鲜明个人特色的作品。同时，他将艺术创作与个人学术研究相结合，并放入个人著作中，以帮助读者更好地理解和思考研究背后的故事和意义。特别是近一年间，他对脸和镜子进行了细致地观察和理解，并创作了许多富有内涵和想象力的创作，这些作品部分也将会出现在他明年的著作中。