Overview

This book provides an in-depth and thematic analysis of socially engaged art in Mainland China, exploring its critical responses to and creative interventions in China’s top-down, pro-urban, and profit-oriented socioeconomic transformations. It focuses on the socially conscious practices of eight art professionals who assume the role of artist, critic, curator, educator, cultural entrepreneur, and social activist, among others, as they strive to expose the injustice and inequality many Chinese people have suffered, raise public awareness of pressing social and environmental problems, and invent new ways and infrastructures to support various underprivileged social groups.

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9781138314344

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Reviews

This significant monograph sketches a vivid portrait of the developing ecosystem of socially engaged art in contemporary China, as well as of the efforts and struggles of the artists and stakeholders involved. ...Wang convincingly argues that art provides a privileged view into these political and aesthetic complexities. Her work provides a valuable opening into a new domain of research on Chinese contemporary art. --CAA Reviews

This significant monograph sketches a vivid portrait of the developing ecosystem of socially engaged art in contemporary China, as well as of the efforts and struggles of the artists and stakeholders involved. ...Wang convincingly argues that art provides a privileged view into these political and aesthetic complexities. Her work provides a valuable opening into a new domain of research on Chinese contemporary art. --CAA Reviews Meiqin Wang's monograph is an important publication that sheds light on cultural activism in China and its transformative character, which advances new bottom-up initiatives and creates alternative sites of knowledge production. Overall, this significant publication presents one of the first scholarly treatments of this topic and fills a gap in existing literature on socially engaged art criticism, thus providing a valuable contribution to the field of contemporary Chinese art. --Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art

This significant monograph sketches a vivid portrait of the developing ecosystem of socially engaged art in contemporary China, as well as of the efforts and struggles of the artists and stakeholders involved. ...Wang convincingly argues that art provides a privileged view into these political and aesthetic complexities. Her work provides a valuable opening into a new domain of research on Chinese contemporary art. --CAA Reviews Meiqin Wang's monograph is an important publication that sheds light on cultural activism in China and its transformative character, which advances new bottom-up initiatives and creates alternative sites of knowledge production. Overall, this significant publication presents one of the first scholarly treatments of this topic and fills a gap in existing literature on socially engaged art criticism, thus providing a valuable contribution to the field of contemporary Chinese art. --Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art

Author Information

Meiqin Wang is Professor in the Department of Art at California State University, Northridge, USA.

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