Chongqing - A children’s art exhibition has opened at Yuelai Museum, showcasing how young artists express their inner worlds through imagination while offering adults fresh ways to reflect on their own emotions.

Don’t Drown, Float with Us brings together ceramics, paintings, poems, and interactive works by children from St. Lakeshore Kindergarten, a bilingual IB kindergarten in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area. The exhibition reveals how young children identify, face, and gently come to terms with their emotions.

The exhibition's title captures a beautifully philosophical thought, said kindergarten principal Qiao Zheng. “We acknowledge water as an inevitable, vital part of life, and emotions are exactly the same,” said Qiao. “To float means to coexist with them; to accept their ebb and flow without being overwhelmed.”

The show opens with two standout works where young artists kneaded intangible mental states into a collection of ceramics and a large-scale visual work. Every uneven clay surface and bold brushstroke becomes a physical portrait of joy, fear, frustration, or calm, rendering internal experiences tangible.

Further into the gallery, a painting series titled Too Scaring sees children confront raw childhood terrors, from the bared teeth of sharks to shadowy ghostly figures.

The painting series Too Sacring reveals childhood terrors. (Photo/St Lakeshore Kindergarten)

While the first half of the exhibition maps how children experience emotions, the second explores how they resolve them.

A section titled When Emotions Conflict features three interactive works designed to untangle frictions. Among them is a conflict-resolution box created by K3 pupils, whose expanding social lives mean emotions are beginning to intertwine with friendship, compromise, and disagreement.

Guided by teachers, the children discovered the nature of conflict and co-created a six-step framework for reconciliation based on expression, listening, verification, and negotiation. Each step is housed in a handcrafted box containing actionable advice.

The first step, To Calm Down, sees pupils list their own soothing rituals, such as watching a windmill spinning in the breeze. The third step, a box titled the Magic Responsibility Mirror, holds mature insights, including a reminder that only speaking your own truth leaves others hurt.

A "Best Friend Again" note: hand-written by children to officially end a playground dispute and seal their friendship. (Photo/St Lakeshore Kindergarten)

The exhibition closes with the children’s vivid reflections, proving that what feels overwhelming to adults can become gentle and playful in a child’s perspective. On overcoming unhappiness, one child writes: “When I’m sad, I listen to music, rub my tummy, roll around on the floor, and then I’m fine.” Another offers an enlightened perspective on fear: “Being afraid might even be a good thing. It gives us a chance to beat fear, so there is less of it in the world.”

The displays on show grew out of the kindergarten’s annual Children and Philosophy programme, an initiative that weaves universal, urgent philosophical questions into everyday learning and artistic creation. 

Qiao said the 2026 initiative responds to growing emotional challenges by helping children learn healthy ways to understand and manage complex feelings. “We hope the exhibition also speaks to caregivers and the wider public,” Qiao said, “reminding them that every emotion deserves attention, acceptance, and gentle care.”

Don’t Drown, Float with Us runs until 30 June with free admission.