The so-called “local calling card” is not the natural manifestation of a regional style, but rather a process through which regional art is refined into stable visual symbols under the combined influence of exhibitions, evaluation systems, academic training, media dissemination, and public cultural consumption. In the case of Inner Mongolia watercolor, its transformation into a “local calling card” is grounded not only in such material and cultural conditions as grassland landscapes, the climate of northern frontier regions, and multi-ethnic cultural memory, but also in the sustained promotion of specialized exhibitions, the institutional development of academic systems, the exemplary role of national-level achievements, and the repeated circulation of images within media and cultural-tourism contexts. From the perspective of art studies, this paper approaches the “local calling card” as a mechanism of visual production. It focuses on how public exhibitions conduct thematic selection, how evaluation standards shape artistic language, how academic platforms consolidate representational paradigms, and how media narratives expand symbolic visibility. While the “local calling card” of Inner Mongolia watercolor has enhanced the public visibility and academic recognizability of this regional genre, it has also given rise to such problems as thematic formulaization, stylistic conservatism, the flattening of local imagination, and the event-oriented shift of creative goals. The future development of Inner Mongolia watercolor should therefore move beyond the repetitive reproduction of established local imagery. On the basis of maintaining regional recognizability, it should further transform the “local calling card” into a mode of visual expression characterized by structural consciousness and contemporary interpretive capacity.
SUERQIN (2026) studied this question.