Curated by Francesca Jordan & Primo Marella In recent years Chinese artists seem to have been stereotyped by the media at home and abroad as shock-mongers who make art that is either political or violent and bloody. This is far from the truth; in fact the majority of artists are going about their creative work in a way that is both more individualized and more globalized. Rather than movements defined by shared themes and subject matter, critics now comment on the rise from experimental to popular of newer forms such as conceptual photography and video installation, on the increasing use of digital technologies and the influence and inspiration provided by the Internet. The artists in Chinese Art Today reveal an acute sensitivity to the world around them; they deal with immediately relevant subject matter, conflating the personal and the political, exploring the dichotomies opened up in Chinese society by rapid urbanization, giving individual interpretations to a wide range of issues such as identity, sexuality, privacy, and self-creation that are by no means unique to the experience of living in China, but are endemic to human society, and particularly urban societies at a certain stage of development.