ABOUT/ PREFACE

Since the mid to late 1980s, a number of Chinese contemporary artists have gained international prominence in using the body as a site for social critique in order to make visible the effects of an oppressive government, a stifling creative environment, and the transformations of their cultural identity due to globalization.
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In using the body language to express the psychological and physical effects on the identity of a conditioned subject, living within a society that does not (arguably, until recently) encourage individuality and uncensored modes of artistic expression, but favors conformity even with the regard to cultural production, the often controversial Chinese artists discussed below, whose practices developed in the 1990s and 2000s, position the body in space and time in a variety of ways. Pushing the boundaries within their culture of representations of the body, the works produced by these artists communicate the anxiety felt within their culture, engage a dialogue about the human condition, and are often an attempt to liberate the self.
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Included in the discussion are works by Chi Peng, Li Wei, Liu Bolin, Ou Zhihang, Ren Hang and, Zhang Huan. These are merely a selection of artists within the Chinese contemporary art collective who use the body to express ideas about the self within contemporary society. Using photography, the artists both privately and publicly position themselves, through their work, against accepted social norms of behavior within their culture in order to release themselves from the cultural mainstream and to renegotiate their individual position within a changing social climate.