Ai WeiweiDropping a Han Dynasty Urn1995 One of Ai’s most famous pieces, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), incorporates what Ai has called a “cultural readymade.” The work captures Ai as he drops a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn, allowing it to smash to the floor at his feet. Not only did this artifact have considerable value,…

UCCA, Beijing From January 19 to May 5, 2019, UCCA presents Qiu Zhijie: Mappa Mundi, the first exhibition after a complete architectural renovation of UCCA’s Main Hall designed by OMA, and the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s Mapping the World Project to date. The exhibition includes 30 large-scale, ink-on-paper maps alongside freestanding objects, an AI software work, and, notably, Map…

By Monica Merlin Yin Xiuzhen (born 1963) works primarily in installation, but also painting and other media. As one of the most established experimental artists in China since the 1990s, her work explores issues of globalisation and cultural identity, interrogating the role of the local, the individual and the environment while exploring the connections between…

By Zoe Zhang Bing Last October, when Liang Shaoji’s exhibition Back to Origin was on show at ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai, I was coincidentally reading Catching the Big Fish (2006), David Lynch’s book on meditation and creativity. In it, the American film director says: ‘Ideas are like fish… if you want to catch the big…

Born in 1954 in Xiamen, Fujian province (China), HUANG YONG PING died in Paris (France) in 2019. He was one of the most famous, controversial and provocative Chinese Avant-garde artists. Kamel Mennour and Huang Yong Ping have been working together since 2009. Founder of the group Xiamen Dada in China in the 1980s, Huang Yong…

New Women Yang Fudong (b. Beijing, 1971; lives and works in Shanghai) is one of China’s most renowned film and photography artists. After completing a degree in painting in the early 1990s, he branched out into a new medium, experimenting with film and shooting on 35-mm stock. Yang now works as a director and photographer,…

Record. Repeat. Considered the first Chinese artist to work in video, Zhang Peili (born 1957) is a pioneering figure in the history of contemporary art. Zhang’s distinctive videos focus on the repetition of actions—breaking a mirror, reading, washing, looking out the window, and dancing—that are familiar yet rendered disorienting through Zhang’s use of perspective, close-ups,…

The leitmotiv for The New Art Fest 2020 probably comes less from an expected linguistic game, than from the title of a seminal work by Chinese conceptual artist Xu Tan: Made in China. Nearly a hundred and fifty works were being set up throughout the museum. Xu was contributing an installation called “Made in China,”…