Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport for "economic crimes," and detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.
Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in Paris. He is mostly known for his photographic work and for his interactive, changing and travelling exhibition projects. A number of monographs about his practice has been published including Per Hüttner, 2003; I am a Curator, 2004; Repetitive Time 2006, Xiao Yao You2006, Democracy and Desire 2007. The Imminent Interviews 2010 and The Quantum Police 2011.
Xu Zhen, born in 1977 in Shanghai, China, is a multimedia artist. Xu Zhen's body of work, which includes photography, installation art and video, entails theatrical humor and social critique. His projects are informed by performance and conceptual art. Xu's work focuses on human sensitivity and dramatizes the humdrum of urban living.
Ou Ning is a Chinese artist, film maker, curator, writer, publisher and activist. He is the director of two films San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2005), chief curator of Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture (2009), founding chief editor of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Commune (2011-2016) and School of Tillers (2015-2016). He taught at GSAPP, Columbia University and worked as the founding curator of Kwan-Yen Project from 2016 to 2017.
Island6 Arts Center is an artist-run space and creative platform established in Shanghai, China. It was founded in 2006 by French curator/artist Thomas Charvériat.
Liu Dao is an international multidisciplinary art collective based at the island6 Arts Center in 50 Moganshan Road M50, contemporary art district Shanghai, China.
Zuoxiao Zuzhou, real name Wu Hongjin, (吴红巾), is a Chinese musician and artist.
Meishi Street, directed by Ou Ning, is a 2006 independent Chinese documentary that portrays a group of Beijing residents protesting the planned destruction of their street prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The filmmakers gave video cameras to the subjects, and they capture exclusive footage of the eviction process.
Meridians Shanghai 2010: Art & Sound in Public Space Project (Meridians) was an international collaboration between RMIT University (RMIT), Melbourne, Australia and East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China to create an installation of urban contemporary public artworks in Shanghai, China for the official Victorian Cultural Program towards Australia's contribution to Expo 2010 Shanghai China.
Vision Forum is an organisation that carries out research in contemporary art and organises events that transgresses the boundaries between performance, exhibition, workshops and education. It grew from a series of events organised by Curatorial Mutiny in collaboration with KSM at Campus Norrköping, Linköpings Universitet in Sweden 2005–2007. Vision Forum took its present form in 2008. It does not have a physical location or a program, but responds to the needs of the group of artists, curators and researchers that are part of the network at any given moment. Its members are mostly based in Europe and have carried out projects all over the continent, in North America, Australia and Asia. In 2009, neuroscientist Stephen Whitmarsh joined the group, showing that the organisation can host members outside of the artistic community. A strategy that has been developed further in subsequent years.
The Shanghai Biennale is one of the highest-profile contemporary art events in Shanghai and the most established art biennale in China. It was initially held in the Shanghai Art Museum. From 2012 on, it has been hosted in Power Station of Art, the first state-run museum dedicated to contemporary art in mainland China. Shanghai Biennale provides artists, curators, writers and art supporters from around the world with a space to meet and exchange ideas about their experiences, works and inspirations to create international dialogues. It highlights the achievements of Asian artistic creativity and production and challenges the conventional division of the world between East and West. Aside from its main museum show, it also includes talks, lectures and installations in various venues throughout the city.
Vincent L.J. Deng's is a Chinese educator. His cultural practices encompass arts, new media and film.
Sharism is a philosophy on sharing content and ideas, developed by Isaac Mao. Inspired by user-generated content, sharism states that the act of sharing something within a community produces a proper value for each of its participants: "the more you share, the more you receive". As knowledge is produced through crowdsourcing, this new kind of shared ownership leads to the production of goods and services where value is distributed through the contributions of everyone involved.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai is a contemporary art museum in the city of Shanghai, China. It is located within People's Park, north of People's Square, the location of a former racecourse that now holds the central administrative building and museums of Shanghai. Surrounding buildings include the Municipal Government Headquarters, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Art Museum and the Shanghai Museum.
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art or UCCA is a leading Chinese independent institution of contemporary art. Founded in 2007 and located at the heart of the 798 Art District in Beijing, China, it welcomes more than one million visitors a year. Originally known as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, UCCA underwent a major restructuring in 2017 and now operates as the UCCA Group, comprising two distinct entities: UCCA Foundation, a registered non-profit that organizes exhibitions and research, stages public programs, and undertakes community outreach; and UCCA Enterprises, a family of art-driven retail and educational ventures. In 2018, UCCA opened an additional museum, UCCA Dune, in Beidaihe, a seaside resort town close to Beijing. In 2021, a third site in Shanghai was opened, UCCA Edge. The museum had 385,295 visitors in 2020, and ranked 55th in the List of most-visited art museums in the world.
Masha Ma is a Chinese fashion designer. Her collections have been featured in leading publications such as Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Pop, French Playboy, Cosmopolitan and L'Officiel.
Xiao Ge, an artist and curator, was born in an art family of Shanghai in 1971. She graduated from Middle School Affiliated to China Academy of Art and then the Printmaking Department of China Central Academy of Fine Arts. In late 1995, Xiao went to France and successively studied in Universite De Provence Aix-Marseille, Oil Painting and Inter Media Art Department of école nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris, Ecole De La Chambre Syndicale De La Couture Parisienne and International Cultural Exchange Department of Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis, where she received double bachelor's degrees and double master's degrees. Xiao returned to China in 2009 and now she lives and works in Beijing and Paris.
Zhao Yao is an artist in installations as well as performance, video and photography. He grew up in Sichuan and currently lives and works in Beijing.
Richard Castelli is a producer, artistic consultant and curator of numerous exhibitions associated with art, science, performance, or new technologies.
