As a vehicle of education and values, Art can contribute to eradicate all forms of poverty and hunger. Today, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative in China and DPR Korea, Vincent Martin officially opened the art exhibition entitled “Our Actions are Our Future - A Zero Hunger world by 2030 is possible”.

Designed to engage and inspire the public with the fight for a “Zero Hunger” world, the two-week exhibition displays a series of paintings, movie, photography, and installations created by renowned artists from China, America, France, Japan, Thailand and the Netherlands. In addition, during the past 4 months, over a thousand of Chinese students aged from 6 to 16 participated in FAO’s online art contest and shared their artwork. Around 800 artworks from the contest have been selected to be displayed at the exhibition in Enjoy gallery of Beijing at 798 art zone.

After a period of decline, world hunger is on the rise. Today, over 821 million people are still suffering from chronic undernourishment, according to the latest FAO report.  “This is an alarming trend for our world and the commitment we made to achieve a zero hunger world by 2030,” Vincent Martin said during his opening speech. “Fighting against hunger and malnutrition worldwide remains a long and difficult journey which requires the participation of all including governments, public and private sectors and the society as a whole. Collective actions and more solidarity can invert this trend and help achieve a Zero Hunger world by 2030, as set out in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” he added. We can achieve a Zero Hunger World by 2030 if we align our actions to our commitment for a better and more sustainable world, because “our Actions are our future”.

The Art exhibition, created in collaboration with the Institute for Culture Creativity of Tsinghua University aims to engage and inspire the youth and demonstrate that Art and creativity can serve as an electroshock, inspire possible futures and bring disruptive innovation needed to transform our actions and achieve a better food future.  Well-known TV host Wang Han and renowned curator Zuo Jing served as the art curators.

“Art should be devoted to discovering and revealing the profound crisis of this era and conveying the problems to the audience through visual and audio approaches, so as to accumulate the awareness and strength for further actions. The exhibition of “Our actions are our future” is about our most basic need to have access to food for our survival, and how our actions could help create a future free of hunger.” Said Zuo Jing.

The debut exhibition of “Our actions are our future” in Beijing is divided into three parts: Unit One, The Living Past, which demonstrates the wisdom of our ancestors in farming techniques; Unit Two, The Present, which focuses on a series of current problems arising from the crisis caused by industrialized agriculture; and Unit Three, Breeding the Future, about actions oriented towards the future.

“The exhibition is only a small part of our efforts. We have to stress that the need for actions and the responsibility of leaving future generations with a beautiful world should be shared by all,” said Wang Han in his remarks. “We need to establish multiple effective channels of education and communication to let more people know that hunger and poverty has been present throughout human history. All countries, and all kinds of forces should take actions to feed a growing population and recover the deteriorating environment of the earth, and to make concerted efforts to build a sustainable agriculture and food system.” He added.

Increasing awareness and engaging governments, the private sector as well as the public to participate in this global fight against hunger is a crucial step for the achievement of a Zero Hunger world by 2030. FAO is committed to working with all actors including artists and private sector companies to raise awareness and make a zero hunger world a reality.

 “The essential solution of hunger is, on one hand, increasing food supply and reducing the cost of food, on the other, saving food and increasing land supply," said Wu Qiang, deputy director of business division of Yihai Kerry, and sponsor of the art exhibition. "As a leading domestic grain and oil enterprise, Yihai Kerry is willing to take social responsibilities, give full play to the advantages of the enterprise, and join hands with FAO to achieve the goal of eradicating poverty and zero hunger."

At the opening ceremony, the organizers awarded the winners of the online art contest. 30 students received prizes for their creative works. The art exhibition will be open to visitors until December 9, 2018.