Why the personal is political in China

Many of today’s younger Chinese artists have turned their sights inward to consider how the nation’s social and economic issues impact their lives. But Chinese contemporary art is still probably best known abroad for its overt polemicists, not least Ai Weiwei or Wang Guangyi, who through the 1990s battled obscurity and repression. Now hotly collected, their works reflect an earlier time of upheaval and rapid change.Examples of Cynical Realism and Political Pop by this pioneer genera