Shanghai Vogue Life 2009 Balloon Body Art Closing Night

It was the 20th anniversary of the massive Shanghai Tourism Festival that attracts millions of tourists to the city every year. The festival kicks off with a carnival and float parade with fireworks and then continues through September and October with dozens of diverse events and festivals throughout the city. They include the Souvenir and Gift Expo, the Shanghai Hip-hop Contest, the Rose Wedding Ceremony (for hundreds of couples), and even a German Beer Festival. This year the AEMI World Body-Painting Festival was introduced as part of the Vogue Life Carnival. The Body Art Festival was integrated with the Balloon Art Festival at Fuxing Park.

I was honored to take part in this bodypainting festival along with a cast of twenty international artists. As ambassadors of bodypainting it was our privilege to share our talents and our goal was to get China to embrace the beauty and relevance of body art.

AEMI president, Chris Wang had previously produced the AEMI World Clown Festival and the AEMI World Balloon Art Competition as components of the Vogue Life Festival, but after witnessing the World Bodypainting Competition in Austria first hand, he set out to introduce bodypainting to the mix. Michael De Prycker of Fantasy-Worldwide was selected to be the organizer for the first annual AEMI World Body-Painting Festival. One of his tasks was to solicit entries from body artists all over the world and submit their portfolios and bios to the Chinese government for final selection of twenty artists. In the planning stages, it was decided that this would be a competition and that fifteen of the artists would be competitors and the remaining five would be judges. The selections were as follows:

The Competitors
Kimberly Buyssens, Belgium
Einat Dan, Israel
Emma Edworthy, New Zealand
Catriona Finlayson, United Kingdom
Mark Greenawalt, United States
Carrie Hoyle, United Kingdom
Filippo Ioco, United States
Birgit Linke, Austria
Lital Nave, Israel
Melanie Rodel, Switzerland
Anita Rorije, The Netherlands
Mario Speleman, Belgium
Craig Tracey, United States
Sabine Vogel, The Netherlands
Bella Volen, Bulgaria

The Judges
Olivier Zegers, Belgium
Jodi Carr, United States
Karen Mills, United Kingdom
Yolanda Bartram, New Zealand
Clelia Marsadie, Canada

Additionally there were 115 artists making up the dance troupes, the models, the balloon artists, and the performance artists. There were four European models (Evy Vermeulen, Thessa Suzanne Grol, Christle Tjon A Man, and our only male model Pieter Van Mieghem), one American model (Lena Toney), and about five or six Asian models each day (Ice, Octopus, Landy, ViVi, and Jelly). When more models were needed, we recruited the dancers. There were six male break dancers in the group Come Correct and six female dancers in the group ELDC (including Carin Van Den Bosch and Gea Catharina Maria van Nobelen). Most days they only had limited availability since they were rehearsing for the mini-galas each night and the closing night gala.

My work in the closing ceremony was just the face painting and special effects makeup for one of the "dryad tree people". I worked with our male model Pieter from Belgiu and used Wolfe FX silicone to make the 3-D bark effect and then used some cotton and Maximum Impact liquid latex to make the tree knot. The bodypainting judges painted the rest of the performers for the Closing Ceremony Gala.

The break dancers were painted as skeletons and all of the female dancers and balloon fashion models were given either glamourous face make-up or decorative facepaint to accentuate their characters. The theatrical production was called Elementz and it was truly a first class show complete with a love story that showcased incredible balloon fashions and set decoration, wonderful dancing and choreography, and a sound track that was wrought with emotion. The bodypainting elements were subtle in the production, but added delicious icing to the cake.

You can see more images from the event on my website at:
http://http://www.futureclassx.com/bodypaint/conventions/091001-Shanghai/Shanghai09.htm