Contemporary China: Intertwining Art with Consumerism and Industrialization

*Originally written December 9, 2021

Artistic pursuits in China have undergone dramatic transformations over the past 60 years. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, virtually all art forms were suppressed in the name of advancing communism. By the late 1970s, however, the country began to shift toward a more capitalistic model, loosening restrictions and allowing artists greater freedom to explore new modes of expression. This political and economic transformation radically reshaped life in China. Economic advancement and consumerism became the new national priorities, essential to positioning China as a global power. Contemporary Chinese art emerged out of this landscape of rapid change, reflecting the tensions and contradictions inherent in evolving individual and collective identities.

Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #10 A & B, Cankun Factory, Xiamen, China, 2005

From the 1990s to the 2010s, artists were particularly influenced by the consequences of industrialization: environmental degradation, the proliferation of waste, and the transformation of once-rural areas. These changes deeply impacted everyday life, providing a new visual and material vocabulary for Chinese contemporary art. In a climate of ongoing political pressure and censorship, many artists turned to Western galleries and auction houses for visibility and financial support. Their work often challenged ideas of cultural authenticity, resisting the expectations of "tourist art" tailored to the non-Chinese gaze. This essay focuses on Dream of China (2008) by Wang Jin, while referencing the work of other artists such as Xu Bing, He Xiangyu, Song Dong, and Cao Fei.

Chen Yanning, Chairman Mao Inspects the Guangdong Countryside, 1972. Siggs Collection.

“Let philosophy become a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses.” Cultural Revolution poster.

Credit: ChinesePosters.net

The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, sought to purge capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. This campaign led to widespread persecution, economic turmoil, and the destruction of historical and cultural artifacts. While art was largely banned, the regime promoted socialist realism—a style rooted in idealized images of labour—as a tool for advancing communist ideology. Following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping rose to power and shifted the national agenda toward economic reform. His leadership opened China to global markets and foreign investment, ushering in a period of intense industrial growth, especially during the 1990s.

As international corporations outsourced production to China, drawn by low labour and material costs, Western consumer goods flooded the domestic market. A new culture of mass consumption emerged, symbolizing status and prosperity. This economic shift gave rise to a burgeoning middle class focused on material wealth, rejecting the Maoist promise of “entering the life” (shenru shenghuo) of the proletariat. Individual success was reframed as a patriotic contribution to national advancement.

Now, more than three decades since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, China continues to grapple with the effects of hyper-production and consumption. The accumulation of waste, the reshaping of landscapes, and the forging of new identities—both nationally and globally—are central themes in contemporary Chinese art. These artists critically engage with the legacies of China’s political history and its present contradictions, offering complex reflections on what it means to dream of China today.

Credit: National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Credit: Kim Briers

In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, marked by the widespread destruction of temples, artworks, and books, Chinese artists began to reevaluate what exactly art is. The next generation embraced avant-garde ideas, reshaping and recontextualizing notions of art and Chinese identity. From the 1980s onward, many artists looked toward transnationalism and self-exploration as sources of inspiration. They began to question what it meant to be Chinese in a nation whose economy and artistic output were becoming increasingly globalized. Recognizing the cultural and economic value of contemporary art, the PRC gradually permitted greater artistic freedom, allowing artists to experiment with both Western techniques and traditional Chinese aesthetics to create new, hybrid forms.

A major turning point came in 1999 when twenty Chinese artists exhibited over fifty works at the 48th Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious international art events. Previously, no identified Chinese artist had participated. Soon after, Chinese contemporary art gained traction in global markets, circulating through Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, and the United States. At home, cities like Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shanghai embraced a form of cultural cosmopolitanism, launching large-scale contemporary art exhibitions that further fueled artistic innovation.

This global shift influenced Chinese contemporary artists in two primary ways. First, they began to engage critically with the effects of capitalism and consumerism on everyday life and cultural values. As scholar Lothar Ledderose notes, large-scale production has long been a hallmark of creativity in Chinese art. Responding to industrialization, many artists began to focus on the factory as a site of both exploitation and artistic potential. Through a process of re-materialization, they repurposed found materials: PVC plastic, construction debris, food products, and clothing into new and provocative forms of expression. Second, with China’s market increasingly open to the world, so too was its art. This gave artists more autonomy to engage with the international art market, bypassing some forms of state censorship and accessing new platforms for visibility and critique.

Wang Jin, Dream of China, Polyvinyl chloride with nylon fishing line, iron chain, hook, 2008, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. 2012.145.

Credit: Barry Friedman Gallery, NYC

Wang Jin, Dream of China, 2008

Dream of China is a reconstruction of a Qing dynasty court dragon robe (longpao), traditionally a symbol of imperial power and prestige, made using unconventional materials—PVC plastic and nylon fishing thread. Historically, these robes were crafted from luxurious materials like silk and satin, their opulence and colour signalling the wearer’s rank and status within the royal court. In Wang Jin’s version, the translucent plastic garment retains the intricate detailing of waves, clouds, and dragons, rendered in a faint green hue. However, the choice of PVC, a material commonly associated with plumbing and electrical insulation, deliberately strips the robe of its traditional value. What was once a potent symbol of authority and refinement is now fabricated from mass-produced, industrial material. By appropriating the form of the longpao without its assumed fabric, the work exposes the emptiness of material-based social capital. The robe becomes a shell, visible but devoid of the meaning and status it once conferred.

Credit: M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong

Wang Jin, Ice: Central China 96, 1996

Wang Jin’s work responds to China’s rapidly expanding capitalist economy by fusing and clashing old and new values, juxtaposing foreign and Chinese symbols, and playfully subverting the sacred with the seemingly profane. In Ice: Central China 96, he constructed a thirty-meter-long ice wall in front of a shopping center in Zhengzhou, containing over a thousand commercial goods. As the installation melted or was destroyed by spectators eager to grab the miscellaneous toys, jewelry, and televisions, the boundary between image and commodity dissolved. What began as a spectacle became a literal transformation of symbolic content into material possession. In contrast, Dream of China engages a different process of rematerialization. Wang replicates the form of a historically significant object, the Qing dynasty longpao, but substitutes its luxurious fabric with synthetic PVC, altering its meaning through material substitution.

Credit: “A Chinese Dream by Wang Jin” by Wu Hung, Public Culture, Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2000, pp. 75-92. Duke University Press.

Wang Jin, Performance Self Portrait, 1998

The work also comments on ownership and labour. While Wang designed Dream of China, he did not physically create it. Instead, the embroidery was completed by twenty peasant women from Zhuolu County in Hebei Province over a month. This production process reflects contemporary structures of labour in China, where urban entrepreneurs rely on rural workers for manufacturing. The Dream of China is not the product of a singular artist, but the outcome of a designer-employer and a team of labourers, raising questions about authorship, value, and artistic authenticity in the global art market.

The piece first gained attention when an early version was sold at auction in 1997 for $10,000 USD as part of the “‘97 Auction of Contemporary Chinese Art and Works by Modern Western Masters.” Its Chinese title, Hongchen Zhongguo—translated as Material China—underscores the country's emerging identity as a global center of production and consumption.

When Dream of China is relocated from a museum collection to an auction house, or even the Imperial Summer Palace in Beijing, it takes on new meanings shaped by its context. Installed at the Summer Palace, the piece seamlessly blends into the constructed fantasy of China, as seen through the eyes of tourists. As art historian Wu Hung notes, Wang’s use of the traditional robe mimics the “authentic cultural experience” that tourists seek. When displayed in the famous Long Corridor, Dream of China was often mistaken for part of the historical scenery rather than recognized as a contemporary art installation, further complicating the boundaries between spectacle, heritage, and critique.

Credit: MASS MoCA, North Adams

Xu Bing, Phoenix Project, 2013

Xu Bing’s Phoenix Project also uses rematerialization, like Wang Jin, by combining traditional Chinese symbolism with industrial materials. The work features two phoenixes—or fenghuang—mythical birds rooted in Chinese history and first recorded in Shang dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions. Xu sourced remnants from urban construction sites: steel beams, jackhammers, shovels, hard hats, hoses, and other debris. These materials were collected by migrant labourers and assembled into two massive birds weighing around 12 tons and stretching between 90 and 100 feet long.

Initially commissioned in 2008 to create a sculpture for the World Financial Center in Beijing, Xu changed the direction of the project after visiting the construction site. He was struck by the poor working conditions and the visible divide between the labourers and the wealthy elite that the building would serve. In response, he built the phoenixes from discarded construction materials as a way to force the labourers’ presence into a space that would otherwise erase them.

By choosing debris and industrial waste, Xu emphasizes the contrast between China’s rapid economic growth and the people whose labour supports it. In glossy skyscrapers and other luxury developments, the evidence of who built them is usually dusted off. But in the Phoenix Project, the workers’ tools and materials are front and center, making their contributions visible on an enormous scale. The work makes it harder to ignore the human cost behind China’s transformation.

At the same time, the piece reflects on broader changes happening in China—cultural, social, economic, and environmental. It reimagines a powerful traditional symbol through the lens of contemporary life, showing how mythology, labour, and modernity are intertwined.

He Xiangyu, Untraditional paintings, 2010

Ink and resin of Cola on rice paper

He Xiangyu, Cola Project, 2010

He Xiangyu’s Cola Project explores how traditional Chinese art can be rematerialized through contemporary materials and processes. Recognizing Coca-Cola as a global symbol of Western culture and consumerism, He boiled down sixty thousand bottles of the soda until all that remained was a thick, viscous residue—what he called cola ash. The project was carried out with the help of ten migrant workers in a lumber mill in Dandong, Liaoning Province. Like Wang Jin, He took on the role of employer-designer, industrializing his artistic process by mass-producing this unconventional material through hired labour.

The transformation of a familiar, mass-consumed product into raw artistic material is central to the work. By reducing Coca-Cola to a dense residue, He created a new medium: an ink-like substance that he used to paint in the style of classical Song dynasty landscapes. This unexpected pairing of consumer waste and traditional brushwork bridges cultural and temporal divides. The work not only critiques global capitalism and labour structures but also asks how cultural forms can adapt and persist in an era defined by mass production and material excess.

The project centers on material transformation as a way of challenging dominant ideas around consumption. He critiques the excessive waste produced by consumerism and capitalism by exhibiting both the monumental black crystalline residue left from boiling Coca-Cola and the delicate paintings made with the resulting ink. The contrast between the two forms underscores the tension between waste and beauty, excess and refinement.

An important element of the work is its relationship to time. Capitalism often emphasizes speed and efficiency as markers of economic progress. In contrast, He deliberately slows down the process—boiling down thousands of bottles of soda over an extended period—reconstructing an industrial product through labour-intensive, unconventional methods. This disruption of time mirrors his broader critique of consumer culture.

The project also raises questions of cultural authenticity. By using a byproduct of a global, commercial product to create paintings in a classical Chinese style, He prompts reflection on whether these works still belong to the Chinese artistic tradition. Is cultural continuity preserved through form, technique, or material? In substituting ink with cola ash, He blurs the line between heritage and innovation, suggesting that tradition itself can be remade through the materials of modern life.

Credit: Jane Hobson; Barbican Art Gallery, London

Song Dong, Waste Not, 2005

To return to the lasting impact of the Cultural Revolution on contemporary Chinese artists, Song Dong’s Waste Not explores the emotional and historical significance of material objects over time. The installation features more than 10,000 everyday items that his mother, Zhao Xiangyuan, collected over 50 years, exhibited at the Tokyo Gallery in Beijing. Over those decades, Zhao experienced profound personal and political upheaval: the imprisonment of her father and husband, widespread political violence, the deaths of millions, the end of collective living, and alternating waves of repression and liberation. For her, each object held potential—a life of endless usefulness and purpose.

The installation includes a vast array of items: scraps of fabric, soap bars, discarded toys, hundreds of utensils, string, magazines, empty toothpaste tubes, bottles, and even the wooden frame of her home. The work draws a stark contrast between the ethos of material conservation during the Cultural Revolution and the rapid, disposable consumption of today. By the mid-2000s, products began to have short life cycles due to declining quality, emotional detachment, and an obsessive drive to upgrade. But during the Cultural Revolution, uncertainty about the future fostered a culture of careful preservation and resourcefulness. This practice became part of a shared identity for those living through the 1960s and ’70s in China.

Waste Not recontextualizes mundane objects, inviting viewers to see them not as waste but as carriers of memory, history, and resilience. It challenges the boundaries between commodity and art by centring the relationship between object and owner, suggesting that meaning is not inherent in materials. Rather, in the lives they touch and endure.

Cao Fei, Whose Utopia?, 2006

Lastly, Whose Utopia? by Cao Fei offers a poignant reflection on the lives of factory workers, providing them with a space to imagine alternate identities beyond the confines of industrial labour. Her body of work is often recognized for its provocative depiction of China’s rapid urbanization and industrial transformation. Set in a light bulb factory, the film contrasts the monotonous rhythm of machines and repetitive labour with scenes of selected workers momentarily escaping their reality—dancing, playing music, or performing in ways that express their dreams. These moments of fantasy stand in stark contrast to the indifferent, mechanical environment around them. The film ends with workers staring into the camera, stating: “My future is not a dream.” Like Xu Bing, Cao makes labourers visible by placing their personal stories and aspirations at the center, challenging the viewer to see them as more than anonymous parts of a machine. Yet, the reality remains: once the film ends, the workers return to the same assembly lines, and the system continues.

This tension raises questions about the role of the artist and the ethics of representation. Cao has said, “What we are doing is production, but a type of production that connects back to the personal. I am a social worker. They don’t regard me as an artist.” But does this positioning exempt her from critique? Like Wang Jin and He Xiangyu, Cao depends on a group of labourers to produce the work, an act that can be interpreted as both collaborative and extractive. The fact that Whose Utopia? was sponsored by the Siemens Art Program—an initiative of Siemens, a multinational manufacturing conglomerate with €8.1 billion in revenue and 33,000 employees in China—complicates matters further. Is the film an act of empowerment, or is it, in part, a corporate advertisement?

This dilemma underscores the broader issue of how political and economic pressures shape contemporary art. As artists navigate funding structures and global markets, their ability to critique systems of power is often entangled with those very systems. Whose Utopia? becomes a powerful example of how art can simultaneously resist and be implicated in the forces it seeks to challenge.

Intertwining the issues of industrialization and consumerism with contemporary art in China brings complex questions of ethics, censorship, and authenticity. The artists presented in this project—despite their diverse depictions, mediums, and techniques—share a common intent: to question modern China’s relentless drive for urbanization and its disregard for the past. Their works reveal the contradictions of economic success by acknowledging the dialectical relationship between progress and production.

The use of labourers and industrial remnants challenges Walter Benjamin’s assertion that a work of art loses its “aura” when reproduced through technical means. These artists mimic China’s production system by adopting an employer-designer and labourer dynamic. Yet, as they critique the consequences of the Anthropocene, the commodification of their art raises ethical concerns. When art becomes a commodity, does it lose intrinsic value? And can it still be critically engaged with as a consumer good?

The return to traditional Chinese art forms testifies to the resilience of Chinese identity, which survived attempts to erase the past during the Cultural Revolution. These artists are not seeking to revive tradition wholesale; instead, they use nostalgia strategically, as a means to critique commercialization and to engage in social and cultural commentary. Chinese contemporary art confronts global consumerism and capitalism by reinventing notions of art, referencing traditional forms and techniques within a modernist framework. Artists are compelled to reckon with China’s socialist revolutionary legacy—ideologies deeply ingrained in generations shaped by the Cultural Revolution—clashing with the current capitalist mentality. As Song Dong observes:

“One’s life can undergo great changes, but the difference in mentality persists in causing a deep generation gap. It appears that this entire generation is mentally unprepared to face changes… This way of life… [has] formed an entire generation of people who have come to epitomize a rapidly changing society.”

This sense of instability is especially felt by generations who lived through the Cultural Revolution when reflecting on contemporary China.

Censorship remains pervasive in the People’s Republic of China and has intensified under President Xi Jinping’s administration. Artists face exhibition closures, threats of violence, or imprisonment, as infamously in 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained for 81 days for alleged tax evasion charges. However, many argue it was in retaliation for the artist's criticisms of the government. Many artists have chosen to avoid explicit political critique, opting instead for more ambiguous or minimalist expressions. For example, He Xiangyu has refrained mainly from political statements to appeal to the domestic market. There is a persistent stigma that political and economic pressures within a censored art environment limit Chinese artists’ capacity for genuine critique. Cao Fei’s close ties to corporate sponsorship invite questions about the legitimacy of her artistic statements. Nevertheless, Chinese avant-garde art, once rejected by PRC officials, has been embraced by the international art market as a symbol of resistance to authoritarianism. Yet even overseas success has brought anxieties about how foreign consumption frames Chinese art, as commodified “Made in China” exports are subject to prejudiced interpretations in the West.

Rematerialization in Chinese contemporary art connects to two key ideas: a search for Chinese identity from a modern perspective through the use of industrial byproducts, and a challenge to China’s complex relationship with the West, which has influenced its economic ambitions and architectural development. The influx of Western commodities has transformed China into a consumer powerhouse. As censorship pushes artists to seek institutional and private support abroad, those wishing to offer social and political critiques must often cater to Western expectations of Chinese motifs. Rematerialization allows tradition to reemerge—after decades of suppression—while acknowledging the rapid changes wrought by industrialization and consumerism. Chinese contemporary art has evolved from “de-Chineseness” to “re-Chineseness”; in the age of globalization, artists continue to maintain Chinese identity by producing authentic “Chinese” artworks.

Chinese contemporary art is not self-contained; global connections and class relations shape it. Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd argue that culture cannot be separated from the influences of politics and economics—they form an “inseparable dynamic.” China’s current experience is deeply intertwined with political and economic transformations that have rendered it unrecognizable from its Maoist past. Through contemporary art, Chinese artists address this phenomenon using unconventional approaches: rematerializing traditional garments and motifs; examining everyday objects within historical and cultural frameworks; and reimagining the role of labourers in industrial production. Contemporary art extends beyond the figure of the solitary artist, as seen in the collaborative labour models of Wang Jin, Xu Bing, He Xiangyu, and Cao Fei. Although Song Dong’s work does not engage directly with modern industrial elements, his repurposing of household objects redefines art’s boundaries and its potential as social critique.

As these artists navigate the authoritarian constraints of the PRC, reliance on Western institutions to exhibit and support their work raises concerns about misinterpretation through a non-Chinese lens. Ultimately, artists in contemporary China find themselves caught between their government and the West, which limits their full capacity to offer political critique. This tension requires further recognition and scholarly attention, particularly regarding the rematerialization of industrial and consumer products in Chinese contemporary art, a subject still lacking comprehensive academic exploration.

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