The M50 art district has many interesting displays. What caught my eyes were the Cosplay photo exhibition from Daniele Mattioli and Yang Chang Hong and the “Useful Life” exhibition by Yang Zhenzhong.

Cosplay is a Japanese concept, meaning costume play, whereby a person dresses up as a fictional character (usually from video games or Japanese manga). The cosplayer usually socializes with a group of other cosplayers at a cosplay event, with the primary activity being posing for pictures. At the cosplay photo exhibition, I was quite impressed with the quality of the pictures. Being quite familiar with cosplay culture, I didn’t know that still scenes of cosplay could be so cool. Also, I was also quite surprised that I didn’t know many of the characters the cosplayers portray.

As for the “Useful Life” exhibition, which is also a photo exhibition, I really appreciate the idea portrayed by the artist. The photos of the women in swimsuits, taken at InternationalHotel, portrays, in my interpretation, a general concept of the word “beautiful,” which is a central theme in the artist’s exhibition. The rest of the photos, are a series of different faces, each with an extremely happy, almost euphoric expression, really expresses the idea of happiness. I suppose when these very different people has a truly “useful life,” they will have this expression. I was quite surprised that the artist was able to capture so many solid emotional expressions.