Metamorphoses | 2025 CAA Graduation Season

HANGZHOU, China, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — As 2025 approaches its most vibrant and life-affirming season, the China Academy of Art (CAA) has already been radiating boundless vitality over the past months. While Black Myth: Wukong Art Exhibition continues to forge its brilliance, CAA now unveils another landmark cultural spectacle for Hangzhou—Metamorphoses: 2025 CAA Graduation Season.

This year’s graduation season revolves around the theme “Metamorphoses”. The concept is rooted in the traditional Chinese notion of the seventy-two pentads. In this philosophy, pentad is change, and change is the Dao; through endless metamorphoses, the primordial core persists. “Metamorphoses” thus stand for infinite possibilities, for capacity, for vision, and above all, for spirit.

Metamorphoses: 2025 CAA Graduation Season was officially launched on May 31. This year’s edition spans seven major venues across Hangzhou: the Xiangshan, Liangzhu, and Nanshan campuses of CAA; Zhejiang Art Museum; World Tourism Museum; Quan Shanshi Art Center; and a citywide media exhibition zone. A total of 2,971 graduates from 20 academic units, including 1,815 undergraduates, 1,006 postgraduates, and 150 students from the affiliated secondary school, present over 3,000 graduation works for the city. On opening night, a themed performance intertwined with a fashion runway show unfolded beneath the rain, transforming the evening into a flowing, poetic spectacle.

President Yu Xuhong of CAA stated, “The 2025 Graduation Exhibition is a concentrated manifestation of CAA’s disciplinary development and talent cultivation. It is a grand stage where 2,971 creative young individuals present themselves for society’s review, and more importantly, a shared public arena of aesthetic education where the power of creation is collectively felt and understood. Let us together create the art of our era, write a new chapter in global art history, and shape the new landscape of world art.”

Liu Yihong, Artistic Director of the opening ceremony and Vice Dean of the School of Visual Communication noted that this year’s stage design breaks away from conventional audience-facing formats. Instead, it unfolds in a four-sided immersive arena, resonating with the thematic spirit of Metamorphoses.

Drawing inspiration from the concept of Metamorphoses, Professors Chen Peng, Wang Shuying, Wu Jie, and Hu Nan from the School of Fashion Design led a collective presentation of 158 graduate fashion collections.

In 2009, CAA became the first art academy to present its students’ graduation works from all disciplines to the public, in the form of the brand-new “Graduation Exhibition Week”. The feast aims to recommend outstanding talents to society and showcase CAA as an “Unwalled Academy” that integrates internal and external resources.

In the face of the boundless cosmos and the ever-shifting global landscape, let us, with the spirit of creators, forge the inner core of our lives and unfold our artistic journeys. Let us, through the actions of creators, drive social innovation and ride the tides of our time. The future of art will surely flourish in the interplay of divergence and convergence, giving rise to infinite possibilities.

The exhibition will run through June 20.