KORE Event | Voices from Below: Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China

The lecture concerns the potential of socially engaged art as a critical and creative response to the many downsides of China’s top-down, pro-urban, and profit-driven social transformations. By analyzing various projects of engagement and intervention launched by contemporary Chinese art professionals, it demonstrates the possibility of individuals as agents of social critiques and changes by carrying out small-scale work at grassroots level. The lecture highlights the practical, transformative and activating power of art for social criticism, place construction and personal development.
Meiqin Wang is professor of Art at California State University Northridge. Her research focuses on contemporary art from China in the context of commercialization and urbanization of the Chinese world. She has written numerous articles on topics of art and cultural industries, art and urbanization, and socially engaged art. She is an author of Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below (Routledge 2019) & Urbanization and Contemporary Chinese Art (Routledge 2016).
This talk is organized by Hong Kal (Department of Visual Art and Art History, York University).
This talk is presented by the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE), funded by the Academy of Korean Studies. It is co-presented by the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) at York University.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/2305628513048469/