Since the early 1990s, the phenomenal rise on the international arts scene of contemporary mainland Chinese artists such as Gu Wenda, Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing and Zhang Huan, among others, has been exemplified in the major exhibitions, museum collections, and books and journals in which their work has appeared. What has perhaps been less available to a general audience, however, is a fuller understanding of the complex cultural and historical contexts from which these artists emerged. In this general overview Valerie C. Doran discussed the art of the Chinese avant-garde as a re-examination of, response to and deconstruction not only of the experiences and memories of the Cultural Revolution, but of aesthetic and philosophical issues with roots in the pre-war period and beyond.

About the speaker

Valerie C. Doran is a critic, writer, translator and curator specializing in the field of contemporary Chinese art and comparative art theory. She was editor of the Post-89 exhibition catalogue, which has become an important reference work in the field and has recently been reissued by the Asia Art Archive. In 1994 she became affiliated with the Hong Kong-based Asian art magazine Orientations , of which she is currently Contributing Editor. Ms Doran is a member of the Hong Kong chapter of the International Art Critics Association and a founding member of the Hong Kong Independent Curators Association.