Avanto 冰上游泳

This painting has a companion titled My Element. Avanto means ice-swimming in Finnish. The piece shows two characters swimming in freezing cold water in a Finnish lake. They made a hole in a frozen lake and jumped into it together. This is a very common activity in the winter in the Nordic country. It is said to be good for one’s health and sense of happiness. In the painting we can see only half of the characters’ faces, which seem to express different emotions (use of different colours). In fact, it seems that the emotions are changing on their faces through the alternating colour shades and tones. Their eyes are closed as if they were mediating together in the (very) cold water. What are they thinking about? Only they can know. This is a very special moment that we can only share with those who are intimate with us.

这幅画还有一幅名为《我的元素》的姊妹画。Avanto在芬兰语中意为冰泳。这幅画描绘了两个人物在芬兰湖中冰冷的水中游泳。他们在结冰的湖面上凿了一个洞，然后一起跳了进去。这是北欧国家在冬季非常常见的活动。据说这有益于人的健康和幸福感。在画中，我们只能看到人物脸部的一半，似乎表达了不同的情绪（使用了不同的颜色）。事实上，通过交替的颜色和色调，他们脸上的情绪似乎正在变化。他们的眼睛紧闭着，仿佛在冰冷的湖水中共同冥想。他们在想些什么？只有他们自己知道。这是一个非常特殊的时刻，我们只能与亲密的人分享。

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。