In his new book, Wu Hung raises timely questions about artistic freedom and censorship. Here, as in the Smart Museum's exhibition Canceled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, Wu uses the government's cancellation of the exhibition It's Me (Beijing, 1998) to anchor his analysis of the challenges faced by contemporary Chinese artists and curators. During this time of rapid change in mainland China, artists and curators are seeking new ways to show work, and finding new allies, patrons and audiences. They are investigating ways to respond to official antagonism, to realize the potential of experimental art in the public sphere, and to maintain the independence of this art in an increasingly commercialized society. Wu addresses these issues through a survey of current exhibition practices, a discussion of the Smart Museum exhibition, a case study of It's Me, a rich collection of primary materials from eleven recent exhibitions. By introducing readers to the complex milieu of experimental artists and curators in China, Wu makes a major contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary Chinese culture.

Wu Hung, a leading expert on ancient and contemporary Chinese art, has identified three critical aspects of current artistic production in China - demystification, ruins, and transience.

Twenty years of experimental art from a globalized China Published on the occasion of the largest exhibition of contemporary art from China ever mounted in North America, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World explores recent experimental art from 1989 to 2008, arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history. Featuring over 150 iconic and lesser-known artworks by more than 70 artists and collectives, this catalog offers an interpretative survey of Chinese experimental art framed by the geopolitical dynamics attending the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization and the rise of China. Critical essays explore how Chinese artists have been both agents and skeptics of China's arrival as a global presence, while an extensive entry section offers detailed analysis on works made in a broad range of experimental mediums, including film and video, ink, installation, land art and performance, as well as painting and photography. Featured artists include Ai Weiwei, Big Tail Elephant Group, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Chen Zhen, Chen Chieh-jen, Ding Yi, Geng Jianyi, Huang Yong Ping, Kan Xuan, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Libreria Borges, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, New Measurement Group, Ou Ning, Ellen Pau, Qiu Zhijie, Shen Yuan, Song Dong, Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Yan Lei, Yang Jiechang, Yu Hong, Xijing Men, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Xiaogang and Zhou Tiehai. An appendix includes a selected history of contemporary art exhibitions in China, artist biographies and a bibliography.

Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Performance Art in China takes as its subject one of the most dynamic and controversial areas of experimental art practice in China. In his comprehensive study, Sydney-based theorist and art historian Thomas J. Berghuis introduces and investigates the idea of the "role of the mediated subject of the acting body in art," a notion grounded in the realization that the body is always present in art practice, as well as its subsequent, secondary representations. Through a series of in-depth case studies, Berghuis reveals how, during the past 25 years, Chinese performance artists have "acted out" their art, often in opposition to the principles governing correct behavior in the public domain. In addition to a 25-year chronology of events, a systematic index of places, names and key terms, as well as a bibliography and a glossary in English and Chinese, this study also offers the reader numerous previously unpublished photos and documents.

"This publication was produced by the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, on the occasion of the exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, curated by Wu Hung with Orianna Cacchione."

"Featuring 70 works in various media--paintings, calligraphy, photographs, woodblock prints, video, and sculpture--that were created during the past three decades, Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China will demonstrate how China's ancient pattern of seeking cultural renewal through the reinterpretation of past models remains a viable creative path. Although all of the artists have transformed their sources through new modes of expression, visitors will recognize thematic, aesthetic, or technical attributes in their creations that have meaningful links to China's artistic past. The exhibition will be organized thematically into four parts and will include such highlights as Xu Bing's dramatic Book from the Sky (ca. 1988), an installation that will fill an entire gallery; Family Tree (2000), a set of vivid photographs documenting a performance by Zhang Huan in which his facial features--and his identity--are obscured gradually by physiognomic texts that are inscribed directly onto his face; and Map of China (2006) by Ai Weiwei, which is constructed entirely of wood salvaged from demolished Qing dynasty temples." --

This volume analyzes the cultural origins, precedents, influences and aspirations of the contemporary Chinese artists.

RongRong's Diary: Beijing East Village presents a selection of images and diary entries made by Chinese photographer RongRong (born 1968) between 1993 and 1998, within the artistic community known as Beijing East Village--now poignantly described as "a meteor in the history of contemporary Chinese art." RongRong's acutely composed, richly expressive images captured scenes of daily life among fellow young, aspiring artists, and created definitive documents of iconic performance works by Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming, among others. Often highly challenging works, their performances and photographs would send an instant shockwave throughout the Chinese avant-garde, and later the global art scene. Revisiting these texts and images anew for this publication, RongRong has composed a personal narrative of an artist coming into his own. Beijing East Village also serves as an invaluable firsthand record of a burgeoning artistic community, its precarious political context and the real lives behind a pivotal moment in Chinese contemporary art.

"What forces continue to oppress and restrain women artists in contemporary China? Some powerful answers are provided in this fictional memoir of Xiao Lu, who played an important role in the avant-garde cultural scene during the tumultuous early months of 1989. The acclaimed "China/AvantGarde" exhibition organized by Gao Minglu at the National Art Museum in Beijing was shut down after about three hours from its opening Feb. 5 1989, when Xiao Lu shot live bullets into her mock-up of two telephone booths, turning an edgy installation work into an over-the-edge performance piece and an icon of the modern Chinese art movement. Many questions were left unanswered from where she got the gun to what she meant by all this. As it turns out, the man and the woman pictured in these two phone booths were specific people, and she was one of them the daughter of the director of a provincial art academy. Her father helped her get into the Central Academy in Beijing, where she was abused in various ways. In the 1989 exhibition, symbolically, she shot her nemesis, then went outside to a public telephone, called him, and told him what she had done. These events are naturally at the center of her memoir, but in describing the events and their aftermath, she offers remarkably candid views on the difficulties facing women in contemporary art circles and the way cultural power is exercised in China."--Publisher description.