The display, collection and market circulation of ethnic minority contemporary art in China reveal persistent structural asymmetries that endure even as visibility increases. Drawing on fieldwork conducted since 2019, this article traces developments from the early People’s Republic of China cultural system through the post-1978 reforms to the current globalized art market. By distinguishing between identity-based and theme-based approaches, it examines how ethnic minority artists navigate state institutions, domestic markets and international circuits while contending with internal orientalism and processes of self-othering. Although institutional attention has expanded, minority artists continue to face significant constraints in shaping how their work is interpreted, valued and circulated. Visibility, in this context, does not translate into equitable recognition. Sustained scrutiny of the opaque mechanisms through which cultural difference is commodified and negotiated within contemporary art worlds is essential for understanding how power operates in framing minority artistic expression.
The contemporary art world is defined by a central paradox: while China has emerged as a dominant force in the global art market and is forming its leading role in technological advancement, the institutional collection of its burgeoning digital art scene remains a complex, contested and comparatively underdeveloped field. The collection of Chinese digital art presents a dual challenge that is both universal to the medium and specific to questions of identity and institutional access. It requires navigating the generic technical complexities inherent to all digital media – obsolescence, ephemerality and data integrity – while simultaneously addressing how artists shaped by Chinese educational systems, social contexts and technological environments navigate global art world structures. This article begins by establishing clear definitional frameworks for both ‘digital art’ as a medium and ‘Chinese digital art’ as a field, grounding the latter in artists’ nationality and formative experience within Chinese society rather than in superficial aesthetic markers. It then clarifies the distinctive nature of this study as conducted from a practitioner’s perspective, outlining the methodological approach and the researcher’s position within the field. The main analysis starts with a comparative case study among three mainstream vanguard institutions: the ZKM / Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Germany; M+ in Hong Kong; and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, followed by a wider scope to the greater ecosystem of unified preservation infrastructure and virtual museum as a new frontier for collection and exhibition. Last but not the least, this article identifies two crucial alternative pathways often not widely known in traditional art context: university computational media programmes and technology conferences with peer-reviewed art tracks. By synthesizing institutional strategies, market developments and emerging validation mechanisms, this research examines the challenges and opportunities in the collection of Chinese digital art. It proposes the necessary synergy between traditional curatorial expertise and emerging ‘technical curator’ roles – figures who can translate between code and culture – while identifying how university and conference infrastructures may provide more accessible pathways for Chinese digital artists navigating geopolitical complexities and institutional barriers in the global art world.
This article examines how artistic value is constructed, negotiated and legitimized within contemporary Chinese art through a comparative analysis of state-run museums and private collecting practices. Focusing on institutions such as the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and the Power Station of Art (PSA), alongside private collections including those of Uli Sigg and Xu Jiankang, the study argues that value is not an intrinsic property of artworks but a relational outcome of institutional, economic and ideological mediation. Drawing on Appadurai’s theory of regimes of value, Wang Hui’s critique of modernity and Chakrabarty’s notion of provincializing Europe, the article conceptualizes the Chinese art ecosystem as a field in which public and private actors co-produce historical narratives and aesthetic hierarchies. It demonstrates how state institutions anchor value in national legitimacy and cultural continuity, while private collectors operate across market-driven, transnational and archival logics. By situating these dynamics within a broader global context, the study reveals how Chinese contemporary art is continuously reframed through overlapping regimes of circulation, recognition and legitimation.
Although there is a long tradition of individuals collecting artworks in China, the private collection of contemporary artworks is relatively recent. Who are these private collectors and why do they collect contemporary art? Beyond personal interests and financial incentives, what historical, social and cultural functions do private art collections serve? What is the relationship between private and public art collections? This interview offers a case study of private art collections in China by focusing on the Shanghai-based PTSD Collection. Founded by Sebastian Liang and Thomas Jiang in 2013, PTSD Collection is one of the largest and specialized private art collections based in China. The Collection’s 600 artworks spread across four locations (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo) in Asia. The Collection encompasses calligraphy, modern Chinese painting, contemporary Chinese and international art. Content-wise, the Collection emphasizes three themes: personal experience-informed ‘Male Gaze on Male’, culturally sensitive ‘Ouch’ and philosophical ‘Chaotic Soup’ in a wide array of art and media forms. In this interview, conducted in Shanghai on 29 September 2025 by Dong Bao, Sebastian Liang, co-founder of the PTSD Collection, introduced his experience, principles and strategies; he also reflected on key issues such as Chineseness, queerness and postcolonialism in the international art market today.
What are the challenges of collecting and displaying contemporary Chinese art in a museum setting? And what are the curatorial practices and strategies responding to these difficulties? Through an analysis of three case studies: Shen Yuan’s Waterbed (1989), Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s Civilisation Pillar (2001) and Huang Yongping’s Bat Project IV (2004–05), this article investigates the challenges embedded and interwoven in each case within a specific cultural context in mainland China from the late 1980s and 2000s. Each work contains unconventional biological materials, including live fish, human fat and taxidermied bats, which impact museum practices at various levels when it comes to long-term display and preservation. Drawing on the author’s first-hand curatorial experience, this analysis further reveals other difficulties, such as shifting ethical values across time and place, a scarcity of institutional support and archives and, in Huang’s case, the history of censorship. The article argues that dealing with historical installation works and addressing such difficulties in museum practices requires curators to adopt research-intensive, open and collective strategies, which could be further transformed into generative forms of institutional knowledge and contribute to future research in this realm.
This article examines the art collection of the China Club in Hong Kong. Built on Hong Kong’s 1990s nostalgia for 1930s Shanghai modernity, the club stages a vision of ‘China’ through its collection of contemporary and historical art and objects, one that is modern, cosmopolitan and ideologically diverse. Through its eclectic assemblage of late Qing antiques, Shanghai Art Deco interiors, socialist memorabilia and Political Pop art, the club performs Hong Kong’s late-colonial imagination of China as a space where conflicting ideologies could coexist. Today, as the collection remains unchanged and stands as a time capsule, that vision has itself become a new object of longing, a nostalgia for the pre-handover Hong Kong that once reimagined cosmopolitan China. This is what might be termed ‘double nostalgia’: a longing for both Shanghai’s modern cosmopolitanism and the cultural confidence of 1990s Hong Kong. Moreover, the China Club exemplifies how art collecting in Hong Kong functioned as a form of cultural imagination, reconciling fractured histories and projecting a plural vision of China at the threshold of its return to Chinese sovereignty.
Over three decades, collecting contemporary Chinese art has evolved from individual patronage and overseas connoisseurship to major institutional acquisitions and transnational donations. In response to this phenomenon, this Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art examines the collecting of contemporary Chinese art as a crucial practice and approach of history-building. Yet, as the seven contributions gathered here demonstrate, collecting is never neutral: it is a site where value, memory and cultural identity are continuously negotiated. The issue brings together six essays and one interview that investigate collecting across multiple registers – curatorial ethics, digital preservation, ethnic representation, nostalgic imagination, institutional intervention and fundamental archiving – revealing a field defined not by consensus but by productive tensions across institutional, geographical and medial borders.
Contemporary photography constitutes an important component of contemporary art practice. In China, the institutional collection of this medium faces unique circumstances and significant challenges. Due to prevailing cultural policy orientations, public art museums have largely overlooked experimental and conceptually driven photographic practices. Consequently, the responsibility for collecting, exhibiting and researching such works has been primarily assumed by private art institutions that emphasize contemporary photography. Founded in 2007 by the renowned photographer couple RongRong and inri, the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre holds the distinction of being China’s first private institution dedicated exclusively to contemporary photography. Drawing on the founders’ personal collection, the centre presents some key works by representative figures in Chinese contemporary photography, thereby constructing a general narrative of the medium’s historical development. Over time, its Chinese photography collecting practices have shifted from reflecting individual aesthetic preferences towards a more systematic consciousness to construct a historically grounded archive of Chinese contemporary photography. This trajectory is reinforced by the establishment of the Three Shadows Photography Award, which enables the institution to maintain a dynamic engagement with emerging artistic practices. Nevertheless, the sustainability of such private institutions remains precarious. Due to broader structural deficiencies within the art ecosystem, these institutions – primarily relying on the founder’s personal commitment and financial backing – face significant sustainability challenges, introducing uncertainties into the long-term collection, exhibition and scholarly research of their holdings. This article examines the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre as a critical case study. By analysing its collection of Chinese contemporary photography, along with its acquisition strategies and the institutional mechanisms that sustain them – within the broader context of the photography collecting landscape – the study aims to illuminate the current state and systemic challenges of institutional collection of contemporary photography in China, particularly within private art institutions.
This article investigates the recent publication by one of China's well-known Red collectors, Dong Zhongchao. His 2023 book, Shiguang wuyu (A Tale of the Times), pairs together Mao-era poster images with photographs of the everyday objects depicted in the poster. This article will analyse this form of visual pairing through two contrasting understandings of the everyday: everyday socialism (the lived experience of ordinary living in the Mao era) vs. the socialist everyday (the idealized project of the socialist transformation of everyday life). It argues that the poster images depicted represent the socialist everyday, while the material objects hint at the realities of everyday socialism. Through this distinction, the article offers two alternative readings of Dong's book: the first sees the material objects as legitimating the poster images; the second, conversely, suggests that this pairing can actually open space to see the gaps between the idealized images and the material realities. These readings can help us to move beyond narratives of nostalgia in understanding the memories of the Mao era in contemporary China.
This article explores the emergence of neo-folk art in contemporary China through the viral figure of Ding Zhen, a young Tibetan man whose grassroots fame on short-video platforms was rapidly appropriated by commercial and state interests. Bridging media studies, ethnic representation and platform governance, the study conceptualizes 'neo-folk art' as a hybrid cultural form shaped by vernacular creativity, digital infrastructure and ideological curation. The analysis unfolds across four dimensions: (1) the transformation of folk art from revolutionary minjian to digital remix; (2) the co-construction of Ding Zhen's fame through meme logic, fandom and affective economies; (3) the platformed landscapes of Shangri-La as tools of visual governance and (4) the negotiation of folk aesthetics in the curated environment of the Chinternet. Drawing on textual analysis of viral content, user-generated remixes and official campaigns, the article shows how ethnic identity, authenticity and algorithmic visibility intersect to produce new forms of symbolic capital. Rather than viewing folk expression as residue or revival, the article argues that neo-folk art functions as a mode of infrastructural folk imagination-a performance of tradition shaped within the logics of platform capitalism and state media.
This article examines the development of China's cultural diplomacy through the lens of documentary co-productions. It explores how earlier forms of state-led communication, previously dominated by top-down messaging and abstract national imagery, are increasingly replaced by emotionally driven, people-focused narratives. Through the case study of a co-production documentary series Homestay China (2019), the article argues that co-production represents a recalibrated form: one that trades ideological assertion for curated affective encounters. Framing the discussion within Jacques Ranci & egrave;re's concept of the distribution of the sensible, the article examines how co-production's visual and narrative strategies reframe China's political messaging as ordinary, intimate and shared. Ultimately, the article argues that while co-productions may appear to decentralize narrative authority and encourage intercultural dialogue, they remain structurally enclosed by the logics of cultural diplomacy. The presence of foreign guests functions less as co-authorship but legitimizing witness. What emerges is a soft power practice that invites emotional resonance with a pre-staged setting. Such practice positions global audiences not as participants in mutual exchange, but as observers of a benevolent and modernizing China.
In Chinese contemporary everyday aesthetics, the concept of collective aesthetics plays an indispensable role. This notion, as manifested in the daily life of contemporary China, originates from the unified paradigm of socialist ideology established in the early years of the People's Republic of China. It is reflected in the everyday behaviours and lifestyles of the Chinese people and exerts a significant influence on interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, this form of collective aesthetics continues to evolve and adapt in response to ongoing political, social and cultural developments. This article explores the collective aesthetics present in contemporary Chinese art, focusing on representative works by Zhang Xiaogang, Yu Hong and other artists. These artworks represent the collective aesthetic sensibility and provide a critical framework for examining the emergence, evolution and development of everyday aesthetic imagery, including specifically blue uniform, grey sofa, white doily and green wall.
The Chinese 1980s was marked by a 'colour revolution', in which the theoretical discourse of colour, epitomized by the field of secai xue ('colour science'), provided the foundation for a range of theoretical discourses as well as the transformation of social life. This article takes up the changing configuration of colour in the early reform period by drawing connections between the revitalization of aesthetic theory on the one hand and, on the other hand, the expansion of commodity production and consumption. In the former case, the article examines the role of the perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, whose rapid dissemination and translation in the Chinese 1980s, including by none other than Li Zehou, allowed for a reconceptualization of the subject of aesthetic perception, in which a receptiveness to colour played a central role. In this frame, the receptivity of the subject to colour came, for Chinese theorists, to authenticate an understanding of the subject in universalist, humanist terms, in place of the class-based theorization of aesthetics that had prevailed in the Maoist period. In the second case, this theoretical understanding came, in turn, to license the expanding commodity economy of the same period. The popular periodicals that emerged in connection with new sectors such as fashion, most notably Shiyong meishu (Applied Arts), invoked theoretical discussions around colour in its relation to the aesthetic subject in order to celebrate the expansion of the commodity economy. In the popular discourse, commodity production and consumption in the reform period would, in contrast to the assumed frugality of the Maoist past, provide for the needs of China's new consumers, above all through the sensorial experience of colour in the course of everyday life. By taking colour as its thread, then, this article sheds new light on the theoretical, aesthetic and lived dimensions of post-socialist China.
In an era of rampant consumerism, what kind of relationship are we forming with everyday objects? This article explores two photographic projects created at the dawn of China's economic and social transformation. The first, Impermanent Instant by Li Jun, is a photographic series produced between 2008 and 2013 and republished in photobook format in 2023. In this work, the artist documents the disappearance of everyday objects within his own home. The second project, Everything Illuminates (2012) by Jiang Pengyi, presents objects photographed in darkened domestic environments after being coated with phosphorescent liquid. The acts of appearance and disappearance serve as strategies to uncover both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences shaped by our interactions with material objects in daily life. In addition to exploring everyday aesthetics, this article adopts a formal approach and draws on photographic theory to analyse both works, highlighting how they offer profound reflections on the intrinsic characteristics of the photographic medium. Through the lens of everyday aesthetics and photographic theory, this article examines how these two photographic projects prompt reflection on the relationship between humans and everyday objects within the broader context of contemporary China.
This study explores the portrayal of amateur, non-specialist writers from grassroots contexts in contemporary China through documentary films of the 2010s, focusing on Yu Xiuhua, Chen Nianxi and Fan Yusu. The analysis centres on how these films construct an aesthetic of the ordinary, framing their subjects' everyday lives as both authentic and marketable, oscillating between validation and fetishization. By underscoring the tension between privacy and the demand for authenticity, these films make non-specialist authors' everyday lives a key feature of their public recognition. The analysis carried out in this article reveals a politics of recognition where it is amateur workers' ordinary background that makes them extraordinary in the eyes of viewers from other backgrounds. Ultimately, the article interrogates whether such representations empower marginalized voices or reduce them to commodified symbols of grassroots authenticity.
This interdisciplinary edition dedicates theoretical and empirical articles to the topic of living aesthetics in modern and contemporary China, with the addition of one article on Hong Kong. Aesthetics is here understood as the discipline of sensual perceptions, rather than the study of beauty, taste or art only. In this editorial, I will firstly introduce the everyday aesthetic discourse, as theorized by among others. Then, I will identify the emergence of a living aesthetics against the socio-historical and cultural context of China. Last, I will provide an overview of the articles, identifying intersections, differences and future directions. The title of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (JCCA) 12.2&3 - '(Extra)ordinary Living' - acknowledges the notion of everyday as a contested field to explore the tension, discontinuities and renegotiations of living in China during the transition from a socialist to a capitalist, urbanized and globalized country. The articles attend to different everyday(s), fostering new perceptions of China and contributing to the expanding scholarship on everyday aesthetics from multiple perspectives, disciplines and thematical approaches, including visual arts and culture, films and anthropology.
The neighbourhood of Thames Town, in the suburban area of Shanghai, is famous for its architectural reproductions drawn from British urban history. The real estate company promoting the neighbourhood insisted on the quality way of life and the place's authenticity that could be found there to attract buyers. A discourse of authenticity which has generally been criticized by many commentators groomed in a western scheme of thoughts dominated with particular conceptions regarding authenticity, originality and imitation. The case of Thames Town introduces a peculiarity in its promotion and its design of an authentic place: it relied on the idea of sensitive and sensorial experience, shaping the thought that authenticity is something to be lived, to be tasted. According to these discourses, Thames Town, characterized by a design so refined, ought to create an emotion in the visitors and the experience of an authentic travel out of China. Yet, the lived experience of the residents is not as colourful as the real estate company intended it to be. Nonetheless, the particularity of the space enables them to be as imaginative and creative in the way they decorate and organize their home. This contribution aims to analyse the different representations of the neighbourhood: from the image of an authentic foreign place made by the developer, which promises a real and extraordinary travel to the visitors, to the uses and habits of residents, grasped through an ethnography lead in Thames Town, and revealing their daily experience of cultural otherness and self-identification through designed spaces.
This article examines how contemporary Hong Kong artists have embraced 'smallness' as a critical aesthetic strategy in the post-handover era, turning away from monumentality and overt political commentary to engage with the social textures of the everyday. Focusing on the practices of Lee Kit, Tozer Pak Sheung Chuen and Lam Tung Pang, the article explores how quiet gestures, mundane materials and ephemeral forms offer alternative modes of artistic subjectivity and political presence amidst Hong Kong's evolving postcolonial condition. Building on Winnie Wong's theorization of smallness, the article proposes an expanded framework that interprets smallness not as a symptom of constraint, but as a deliberate and generative mode of engagement. Connecting the notion of 'smallness' with Ackbar Abbas's concept of disappearance, the article argues that these minor practices form an aesthetics of negotiation and survival that unsettles dominant representational paradigms, while foregrounding intimacy, contingency and community. Through close readings of artworks and analysis of the Fo tan artist community, the article situates smallness as both a formal strategy and a relational ethos that redefines the function and politics of contemporary art in Hong Kong.
This article examines the intersection of ritual practices and urban transformation in Shanghai, specifically focusing on the sacrificial burning of paper offerings by residents of vanishing lilong neighbourhoods. It underscores the significance of fire and rituals as transformative elements in spiritual and communal life, highlighting their role in connecting the living with ancestors and fostering community bonds. Despite modern regulations limiting these practices, rituals continue, albeit in more discreet forms. The study argues that the selective preservation and commercialization of Shanghai's history prioritize certain narratives, erasing the lived experiences of ordinary people. By exploring the social and symbolic meanings of these rituals, the article suggests that they serve as farewells to a disappearing way of life, reflecting broader themes of loss, memory and identity amidst rapid urban change. Partly drawing on personal experiences, the author discusses the notion of spiritual drift, where urban transformation results in dislocation and necessitates new forms of community. Ultimately, the research highlights the importance of maintaining a living culture that connects people and remains relevant to contemporary life, rather than merely preserving the past as a static constellation of symbols.
My research engages with the critical and cultural theory of American thinker Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) to explore the cinema of contemporary Chinese director Jia Zhangke (1970–present). In this article, I argue that Jia’s films achieve what Jameson, in his conceptualization of postmodernity and late capitalism, calls cognitive mapping. This concept refers to the complexly mediated relationships between cultural representational forms and social totality. Thinking with Jameson and pushing his theory to a new direction, I contend that Jia’s films illustrate ‘cognitive mapping with Chinese characteristics’. These special features include: first, Jia’s use of xiancheng (‘county-level city’) perspective; second, his utilization of the bankuai (‘block’) structure; third, his interrogation of reality and fiction; and fourth, his use of intertextual and transmedial references. In this article, I focus on Jia’s film, Ershisichengji ( 24 City ) (2008). I argue that in 24 City , Jia adopts the second, third and fourth strategies and seeks to capture the effects of the otherwise unrepresentable totality that is global capitalism in China. When Sigmund Freud analyses his patient’s dreams, he begins with the dream-contents (manifest content). Then he moves through the unconscious desire (form) and arrives at the dream-thoughts (latent content). Similarly, when Jia explores history and memory, he begins with reality. Then he moves through fiction and arrives at the sense of history. What Jia tries to capture is the sense of history, not simply history. Engaging with the moving image and contemporary Chinese art in a creative manner, Jia attempts to bring this sense of history back to our postmodern time in which historicity, according to Jameson, has been lost.
