China Art Now
This short bibliography is intended to be an overview of the literature on contemporary art writ broadly.
Andrews, Julia, and Kuiyi Shen. 2012. The Art of Modern China. University of California Press. (last few chapters).
Chang, Tan. 2023. The Minjian Avant-garde: Art of the Crowd in Contemporary China. Cornell University Press.
Cheng, Meiling. 2013. Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art. Seagull Books.
Debevoise, Jane. 2014. Between State and Market: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Post-Mao Era. Brill.
Gao Minglu 高名潞. 2002. Fengshou: Dangdai yishu zhan 豐收：當代藝術展 [Harvest: Contemporary Art Exhibition]. National Agricultural Museum.
Gao, Minglu. 2005. The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art. The Albright Knox Art Gallery and China Millennium Museum of Art.
Gao, Minglu. 2011. Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art. MIT Press.
Hendrikse, Cees, and Thomas Berghuis. 2008. Writing on the Wall: Chinese New Realism and the Avant-Garde in the Eighties and Nineties. Groninger Museum.
Hopfener, Birgit, ed. 2012. Negotiating Difference: Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global Context. Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften.
Wang, Meiqin. 2019. Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below. Routledge.
Wang, Meiqin. 2016. Urbanization and Contemporary Chinese Art. Routledge.
Wu, Hung. 2016. Contemporary Chinese Art. Thames and Hudson.
Wu, Hung. 2009. Making History: Wu Hung on Contemporary Art. Blue Kingfisher.
Zhou, Yan. 2020. A History of Contemporary Chinese Art, 1949 to Present. Springer.
Feminist arts
Artspace Editors. 2017. “Plushy Terrorism and Cities in Suitcases: Artist Yin Xiuzhen on How to Challenge Society with Its Own Refuse.” Artspace, January 14, 2017. DOI: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/yin-xiuzhen-phaidon-excerpt-54534.
Bao, Hongwei. “Curating queerness and queering curation: Exhibiting queer Chinese art in Europe.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 9, no. 3, 313–332.
Bao, Hongwei. “Metamorphosis of a butterfly: Neo-liberal subjectivation and queer autonomy in Xiyadie’s papercutting art.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 6, no. 2-3, 243-263.
Bao, Hongwei. “The wedding complex: Chinese queer performance art as social activism.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 10, nos. 1–2, 39–63.
Chang, Tan. 2012. “Art For/Of the Masses: Revisiting the Communist Legacy in Chinese Art.” Third Text 26 (2): 177–94.
Chang, Tan. 2020. “Politics of (In)Visibility: Yumen, and Zhuang Hui’s Anti-Art Photography.” Art Journal 79 (2): 24-41.
Cheng, Amy. 2004. “The Art of Yin Xiuzhen.” Home and Away: Crossing Cultures on the Pacific Rim. Vancouver Art Gallery.
Chow, Whiskey, and Naying Ren. “Queering boundaries: Art, politics and activism in performance art.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 6, no. 1, 131-153.
Claypool, Lisa. 2025. “China’s Feminist Gap: Edges, Nearness, and Distance in Women’s Arts.” positions: asia cultures critique 33, no. 2 (May): 257–89.
de Silva de Alwis, Rangita, and Katherine A. Schroeder. 2021. “The Changing Landscape of Women’s Rights Activism in China: The Continued Legacy of the Beijing Conference.” Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law, no. 2839. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2839
Hao, Goh Wei. “It does not run in the family: Chinese performance art and the queering of the Confucian family.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 10, nos. 1–2, 65–83.
Jia Fangzhou 贾方舟. 1998. Shiji nüxing: Yishu zhanlan 世紀女性艺术展 (Century of women: An art exhibition). Shijie huaren yishu chubanshe.
Jia Fangzhou 贾方舟. 2011. Weilai zhi xiang: Nüxing yishu 未來指向：女性艺术 [The Future to Female Art]. Publisher’s information not available.
Kyan, Winston. “The queer art of Yan Xing: Towards a global visual language of sex, desire and diaspora.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 9, nos. 1–2, 313–332.
Liao Wen 廖雯. 1999. Nüxing yishu: Nüxing zhuyi zuowei fangshi女性艺术: 女性主义作为方式 (Women’s arts: Feminism as form). Jilin meishu chubanshe.
Lü Pin 呂频. 2019. “‘Nüquan Wu Jiemei’ Si Zhounian, Nüquan Hexin Zuzhizhe de Pinkun, yu Pinkun de Nüquan Yundong” “女权五姐妹”四周年，女权核心组织者的贫困，与贫困的女权运动 (The Fourth Anniversary of the “Feminist Five”: The Poverty of Core Feminist Activists and the Impoverished Feminist Movement). The Initium, March 8, 2019. https://theinitium.com/article/20190308-opinion-lvpin-feminist-and-metoo/.
Lu, Wentao. 2020. “Digitally Networked Feminist Activism in China: The Case of Weibo.” kommunikation.medien no. 12, 1–22.
Mao, Chengting. 2020. “Feminist Activism via Social Media in China.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 26 (2): 245-258.
Meng Yue 孟悦, and Dai Jinhua 戴锦华. 1989. Fuchu lishi dibiao 浮出历史地标 (Surfacing onto the horizon of history). Henan renmin chubanshe.
Sun, Wei. 2020. “Rice Bunny and #WoYeShi: Online Reactions of Overseas Chinese to the #MeToo Movements in China and the West.” Howard Journal of Communications 31 (3): 245-263.
Wang Han 王涵, ed. 2019. Zhongguo xinshengdai nüxing yishu jinping ji 中国新生代女性艺术家精品集 [Collected works of Chinese new-generation female artists]. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe.
Wang, Qi. 2018. “Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: A New Feminist Generation?” China Perspectives, no. 3, 59-68. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.8165
Wang, Zheng. 2015. “Detention of the Feminist Five in China.” Feminist Studies 41 (2): 476–482.
Wei, Wei. 2021. “Queering the Rise of China: Gay Parenthood, Transnational ARTs, and Dislocated Reproductive Rights.” Feminist Studies 47 (2): 312–40. https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.47.2.0312.
Welland, Sasha Su-Ling, and Christina Chung. 2021. “Wandering Geographies: Aesthetic Practice along China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Feminist Studies 47, no. 2 (Summer): 372–416.
Welland, Sasha Su-Ling. 2004. Cruel/LovingBodies [酷／爱⾝身体], bilingual Chinese/English exhibit catalogue, editor and translator, 798 Space & Duolun Museum of Modern Art.
Welland, Sasha Su-ling. 2005. “On Curating Cruel/Loving Bodies.” Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. 4, no. 1 (March): 17–36. If there is a catalog to the exhibition, you definitely should include it in your dissertation bibliography. She’s writing about work contemporary with Cui’s video of the sex workers.
Welland, Sasha Su-Ling. 2006. “What Women Will Have Been: Reassessing Feminist Cultural Production in China,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31 (4): 941-66.
Welland, Sasha Su-Ling. 2018. Experimental Beijing: Gender and Globalization in Chinese Contemporary Art. Duke University Press.
Wu, Angela Xiao, and Yige Dong. 2019. “What Is Made-in-China feminism(s)? Gender discontent and class friction in post-Socialist China.” Critical Asian Studies 51 (4): 471–92.
Xu Hong 徐虹. 2003. Nüxing: Meishu zhi si 女性: 美术之思 (Women: The mind in the arts). Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe.
Xu Hong 徐虹. 2005. Nüxing yishu女性艺术 (Women’s art). Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe.
Yang, Yue. 2022. “When positive energy meets satirical feminist backfire: Hashtag Activism during the COVID-19 Outbreak in China.” Global Media and China 7, no. 1 (March): 99–119.
Yao Daimei姚玳玫. 2019. Ziwo huaxiang: Nüxing yishu zai Zhongguo 1920-2010自我画像：女性艺术在中国 (Self-portraits: Women’s Art in China, 1920-2010). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan.
Zhai Yongming 翟永明. 2008. Tianfu ruci: Nüxing yishu yu women 天赋如此：女性艺术与我们 (Talented like this: Women’s art and us). Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe.
Zhu Jirong 朱紀蓉, ed. 2002. Wenben yu ciwenben: Dandai Yazhou nüxing yishujia 文本與次文本：當代亞洲女性藝術家 [Text & Subtext: Contemporary Asian women artists]. Taipei: Taipei shi meishuguan.