NANJING Art Fair International (NAFI) stepped out of the shadows of Shanghai’s West Bund Art & Design and ART021 gala late last month to show it could rival its big city brother in the art festival stakes.

Artists, curators and collectors from all around the world turned up in the capital of Jiangsu Province, to show off their wares to excited Nanjing locals and art lovers, which attracted almost 10,000 visitors every day of the four-day event.

In all, NAFI hosted 30 top galleries from around the world, 60 percent of them from overseas.

“Due to the pandemic situation many galleries in Europe and the US started laying off their working staff and art institutions are facing the severe survival pressure,” said Uli Sigg, one of China’s top collectors in the contemporary world of art, at the opening ceremony. “But NAFI, who organized the big-scale art activity, has given the industry a shot in the arm.”

Founded just a year ago, NAFI is ambitious and very clear in building its own image. It successfully interpreted the diversity of an art fair, rather than just a stereotypical gala selling exhibition booths.

This year it even fused a fashion element into the art fair, thanks to its continued cooperation with Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week and the official Paris International Haute Couture Fashion Week, and presented an avant-garde, haute couture fashion show. It also developed some side products like canvas bags, handkerchiefs and limited edition Karl Lagerfeld sweaters.

Exhibits seen from the fair varied from video, photography, installation, oil painting, sculpture, design works and fashion productions, but photography and video are still NAFI highlights, distinguishing itself from other art fairs in the country, according to the organizer.

For example, its special section this year, “NAFI Documenting,” featured works of photographer Lin Kun, who recorded an unforgettable memory of each individual and the nation as a whole during the time of COVID-19 outbreak.

Similar to other art fairs, NAFI also introduced pop-street art to attract more young people.

The “NAFI Wild” teamed up with a number of design labels to create art on street signs and pedestrian walkways, where trendy shops and artistic elements collide into a charming area outside the venue.

A local farmers’ market was NAFI’s another intriguing project. The prints from master artists, such as Vincent van Gogh, were hung around the market with catchy slogans in each booth. Zhou Zhuodong and Chang Yulin, two young artists from Nanjing, created the works for the market, with an aim to bring arts and culture into the community.

Apart from promoting art appreciation, eight musicians and eight artists were invited to present a cross-field program themed on animals, bringing more than just an unprecedented audio-visual feast, but also a wonderful exchange and collision in the two forms of art.

Industry insiders think NAFI has been working out some new and bold ideas in developing the future diversity of the art fair.

In the future, Nanjing, a historical city that nurtured one of the nation’s top art academies and spawned several distinctive art museums, will be a new highlight on the art map of the Yangze River Delta in line with Shanghai.