Since 2006 Mao Xuhui, a leading figure of Chinese contemporary art, has revisited Guishan Mountain and nearby villages inhabited by the Sani people, a branch of the Yi ethnic group. The place is some 100 kilometers from Kunming, Yunnan province, where Mao has lived since childhood. There, Mao experiences a simple, self-sufficient and peaceful life exemplified by the Sani people. He feels days are repetitive and time is frozen in Guishan, in which he has found eternity and calmness, and new reasons to keep on painting.

Mao's Guishan series of paintings are on show at The History of Eternity: Forty Years of Mao Xuhui 1980-2021, a retrospective exhibition reviewing his artistic development over the past four decades, beginning with his active days during a vanguard art movement in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in the 1980s.

The exhibition, held at Tang Contemporary Art Beijing until Aug 26, shows oil paintings, ink works on paper, drawings and mixed-media creations to encompass distinctive motifs and styles in the different stages of Mao's career.

It is a document of not only an individual's continuous self-reflection, intensive vigor and tireless creativity but also serves as a mirror of the evolution of Chinese contemporary art.