Mirror images

Song says the Dunhuang Research Academy's job is first to protect vulnerable murals and research their origins, which span more than 1,000 years of Chinese art history, and involve the unbroken development of China's folk culture, music and society. The next step is to spread knowledge about the art and culture of the caves by holding shows worldwide, says Song. She has worked at the academy for 20 years.

The Mogao Grottoes are China's first UNESCO World Heritage Site. It hosts 735 caves containing 45,000 square meters of murals. It has been referred to as an "unmovable museum on walls".

To protect the site and make exhibitions in other cities possible, artists have continued copying the cave murals since the 1950s. To date, they have finished just 12 caves. All the colors, lines and patterns found in the murals have been faithfully re-created, including details, such as colors that have faded or changed due to oxidation.

In some instances, it took an artist eight to 10 years to finish replicating paintings on a single wall because of the difficulties, such as dim light in the caves or the limited amount of time they were allowed to stay inside the cave for preservation purposes.

The seven copied caves on display allow audiences to take a close look at the murals and Buddhist sculptures, shoot photos and remain inside as long as they want－something not permitted at the original site.

Highlights of the exhibition include a 13-meter-long reclining Buddha from the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Like other Buddhist sculptures on show, it was modeled and then painted by the artists. The head of the Buddha weighs around 1 metric ton and needed 25 people to move it, says Dai An, art director at Blooming Investment, a local company that focuses on art and culture projects and the organizer behind the exhibition. It took them more than one month to curate the show, says Dai.

Yang Juze, founder of Blooming Investment, says his mission for the show was to share Dunhuang's culture with as wide an audience as possible, especially younger people. This was the reason for introducing so many high-tech features in the exhibition, to make it more appealing to younger visitors.