Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China

by Melissa Chiu

This first book to substantially focus on China's artistic diaspora--and to differentiate it from the artistic community inside China--assembles the work of 14 artists who emigrated in the lead-up to the 1989 protest at Tiananmen Square. Now settled in New York, Paris and Sydney, over the past decade these artists--including Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu Bing, Wenda Gu, Zhang Huan, Huang Yong Ping and Chen Zhen--have become leading international figures. They have shown at major American institutions and have had important solo exhibits. For example, Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder work has recently appeared in solo shows at Tate Modern in London and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Huang Yong Ping's Walker Art Center retrospective recently went on international tour. Breakout features in-depth analyses of this important group's work, much of it based on interviews with the artists. The book's editor and author, Melissa Chiu, is a leading authority on Asian contemporary art. She was until recently the Asia Society's Curator for Contemporary Asian and Asian-American art; she is now its Museum Director. A Getty Curatorial Research Fellow, Chiu has organized more than 30 exhibitions, published widely in journals, magazines and catalogues, and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Genres: Art

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[jes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting discussion of artists who have left China and how their work fluidly connects their homeland and their country of residence. Especially noteworthy that Chiu uses Chen Zhen’s idea of transexperience to explain how the art reflects a dual experience of being both Chinese and western, and not just one or the other.

[Molly Cawthorn-Matre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did wonders to change my perspective of artists from or influenced by a variety of cultures.