China has finally announced its plans for the China pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. Peng Feng, vice dean of the Aesthetics and Educational Research Center at Peking University, has been chosen from a short list of 11 candidates and has in turn invited five artists to participate in his exhibition entitled the "Pervasion of Chinese Flavors." The artists will each create a separate installation taking as their starting point a different Chinese flavor or scent.

The artists chosen are an interesting blend of establishment figures — like traditional painter and president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Pan Gongkai — and up-and-comers like Liang Yuanwei and Cai Zhisong. Peng reportedly contacted some 20 artists to submit ideas on his theme before arriving at the chosen five.

The full group of artists is Cai Zhisong, Liang Yuanwei (the only woman in the group), Pan Gongkai, Yang Maoyuan, and Yuan Gong. Cai's work will evoke tea; Liang's the pungent scent of China's traditional white spirit, "baijiu"; Pan's, the smell of lotus; Yang's, medicinal herbs; and Yuan's, incense.

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The theme may strike some as conservative, but Peng Feng, in an interview with ARTINFO China, says that while the subjects are traditional, "they are also contemporary, as these traditions are still alive today." In fact, the embrace by artists of traditional subjects, iconography and aesthetics is one of the strongest movements in Chinese contemporary art today, as evidenced in exhibitions like that by leading Chinese curator Lu Peng in London last year.

Meanwhile Hong Kong has still not officially confirmed the details of its pavilion for Venice. As we reported earlier, the Hong Kong arts council extended their deadline for artists' proposals till the end of November 2010 and it now seems that they are planning to delay their official announcement until the last minute. Sources there, however, say that the choice has in fact been made, and that the arts council has chosen multi-media artist Kwok Mang Ho, better known under his persona Frog King, for the pavilion. The sixty-something Frog King (see here) has a particular affection for creating interactive installations embodying his favourite theme of "Art as Play."