Exploration and Analysis of the Contemporary Chinese Art Activism

as an Intervention in Urbanization

Rui Zhou

Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Keywords: Urban Intervention, Public Art, Contemporary Art, Urbanization, Chinese Art.

Abstract: China’s rapid urbanization and market-oriented reforms resulted in localized socio-political issues while

redefining the image of world power. The ideological shift during the social transformation creates an

experimental era for art interventions and cultural practices. This article maintains that artistic production

serves as a means to understand, interact, and critique the transformation of urban spaces, contributing to

responding and addressing the challenges suffered by citizens and the nation. Focusing on the perspectives of

common people, socio-economic and physical geographies inequality, and nation branding during the urban

revolution, this article examines the expressions of artistic activism in China reflect on the issues arising from

urban space development. Adopting phenomenological approach and action research methods, it considers

artworks as manifestations and mediums for the narratives of residents and social discourse identities, thereby

interpreting the potential of cultural strategies as form of deconstructing contemporary urban issues in China

amidst social and environmental change.

1 INTRODUCTION

The implementation of reform and opening-up in

China coincided with the influx of international

capital driven by neo-liberalism and economic

globalization in the 1980s, which accelerated the

rapidity of urbanization (Tam, 2020). These top-

down social transformations reshaped the living

environment of citizens and emerged as subject of

public political or cultural imagination,

reconstructing ethnography within the national

context (Wang, 2015).

Nevertheless, national socioeconomic

transformation imposes the popular masses to surfer

throes and confusion (Mirra, 2020). Urban

development has shaped a volatile environment of

mobility, where citizens confront anxieties of

dislocation and alienation in the shifting time and

narratives, which interact with trans-local and social

texts, ultimately influencing nation-building

(Valjakka & Wang, 2018).

In response, local artists who concern for new

urban aesthetics concentrate on socially

underprivileged people, disappearing historical land

spaces, as well as the marginalization of national

image identity resulting from an atomized society,

utilizing artistic creative expressions as a means to

perceive, interpret, and address the dilemmas of

urbanization (Jiang, 2020).

This article focuses on contemporary Chinese

artists who have background shaped by the impacts

of urbanization and possess an urban consciousness,

exploring how their creation of locality to

deconstructs and applies the concept of urbanization

through diverse materials, forms, and multimedia

installations to construct narrative discourse that

supports underprivileged social groups negotiate

visibility and address structural issues (Zhang, 2020).

Furthermore, the article discusses the significant role

of artistic practices in reshaping and promoting

Chinese cultural identity and nation branding along

an unprecedented path of development.

2 METHODOLOGY

This article adopts phenomenological approach and

action research methodology, exploring how Chinese

artists are voicing diverse groups and issues while

dealing with the juxtaposition relationship between

contemporary urbanization and artistic production.

The phenomenological approach emphasizes that

abandons the preconceived theoretical frameworks,

aiming to objectively employs participatory attitude

Zhou, R.

Exploration and Analysis of the Contemporary Chinese Art Activism as an Intervention in Urbanization.

DOI: 10.5220/0013962400004912

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development (IESD 2025), pages 35-40

ISBN: 978-989-758-779-5

to describe the phenomena and experiences generated

by the research subjects (Cissé & Rasmussen, 2022).

Moreover, the action research involves investigating

strategies and effectiveness of problem-solving

practices within real social situations (Wright, 2015).

Thus, this article is based on cultural activism and

combines the quantifiable and intangible contexts

within urban revolution, analyzing phenomena

generated by aesthetic production as a method of

urban intervention and the subjective experiences of

social groups. Consequently, this study examines the

cultural phenomena and interventions generated

through artistic works in individual, land, and

national image. It aims to demonstrate the possibility

of art as a vehicle for addressing public issues and

engaging with utopian dreams, reimagining the

symbiotic interdependence between humans and city.

3 THE ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

ABOUT MIGRANT WORKER

IN THE CHINESE

URBANIZATION

The restructuring and expansion of industries during

urbanization attracted large-scale flow of rural-urban

migration, resulting in the conflicted spatial

concentration of population and production (Lu,

2011). Confronting with the unfamiliar exploitative

and elitist value systems in cities, migrant workers

with limited cultural and economic resources endure

discrimination, and marginalizing as ‘superfluous

people’ (Grube, 2020). In response to the polarized

laboring environment of this transitional period, local

artists employ art interventions, including

photography, installation, and performance art, to

create spaces for dialogue and resolution, thereby

concerning with and revealing the destruction and

disruption experienced with the migrant population in

their lives of excluded from the right to the city (Qi,

2023).

As the economic focal point of urbanization

policies, the growing demand for industrial

transformation in the Pearl River Delta facilitates an

influx of rural populations into the development

zones to serve as cheap labour and rendering them to

objectified individual (Tam, 2020). The consumerist

environment which detached from individual lived

experiences exacerbates tensions between

marginalized citizens and the modernized imagery of

urban clusters (Yu, 2020).

Liang Juhui, who is a member of the Big Tail

Elephant Working Group from Guangzhou, created

the experimental performance artwork One-Hour

Game (1996) within a moving construction lift at the

Sinopec Towers (figure 1), to highlight the exclusion

and alienation suffered by migrant laborers as the

objects of urbanization (Lin, 2018). In the

photographic documentation, Liang dresses the blue

uniform and safety helmet, which symbolize worker

image, and crouches within the narrow confines of the

elevator grille while playing the video game Battle

City (1985). Over the hour-long performance, the

workers’ elevator, which represented the prison

imprisoning the identity of rural migrant laborers

embodied by Liang, moved up and down the

expansive urban construction landscape following the

predetermined rhythms of the building process (Wu,

2010).

Liang Juhui’s artistic practice integrates the

artist’s body with urbanism materials as medium for

expression. This approach appropriates the repetitive

work scenes associated with urban construction to

reveal and examine the monotony of laborers lived

conditions. By employing sharp contrasts, Liang

metaphorically represents the impoverished lives of

migrant laborers trapped within the urbanized context

through his own powerless portrayal in the elevator

(Tan, 2015). The video game symbolizes the nipple

entertainment culture in lower tier market, which is

utilized by marginalized individuals for distraction

and escapism from the harsh realities of life.

Furthermore, this work offers a illustration of

human alienation in the context of industrial

urbanization (Merlin, 2018). The elevator operation

is confined to two-dimensional vertical motion,

lacking the capacity transport in other directions. The

juxtaposition of the wide-angle city skyline with the

restrictive and mechanical operations of the elevator

emphasizes the sense of powerlessness and absurdity

encountered by rural migrants, who find themselves

with nowhere to turn under the dominant narrative of

urbanization.

The identity issues faced by migrant workers and

other margins of the cities and invisible residents

linked to the processes of urbanization, which led to

the dismantling of neighborhoods and the rural

landscape. Thus, Chinese artists who engage with

rural predicaments connect their bodies with the land

and environment, adopting performance art to

articulate the loss of emotion associated with land.

IESD 2025 - International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development

Figure 1: Liang, J. H. One Hour Game.

4 THE GEOGRAPHICAL

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IN

THE CHINESE URBANIZA-

TION

The crucial topic in urbanization is the appropriation

of rural land. The uncontrolled expansion of urban

property industries misappropriated the rural lands

and traditional buildings, resulting in the deprive of

collective memory and the hollowing out of

community culture (Wang, 2015). As a result of

construction development by real estate companies or

local authorities, the dwellings of villagers are

squeezed and destroyed (Mirra, 2023). They are

compelled to migrate to the cities while living space

and collective memories are deprived. The art

professionals who concentrate on sacrificed

geographical spaces connect the avant-gardism of art

with the social issues surrounding encroached rural

land, forming a manifestation of social intervention

and engagement (Wang, 2018).

The joint exhibition, Land, created by Li Binyuan

and Zhang Huan, transcends the limitation of single

geographical area. The artists adopt physical and

performative art form to represent the intrusion of

rampant urbanization into rural environments,

thereby interpreting the emotional connection

between people and land. In Chinese culture,

farmland is regarded as the root, representing the

foundation of traditional civilization relations and life

primal agency (Yu, 2020). Nonetheless, the

dichotomy between city and countryside engendered

by urbanization resulted in farmland being regarded

as a sacrifice to industrialization. This condition

dissolves collective memories for root and

disintegrates the traditional attachment to the

countryside.

In the Freedom Farming, Li Binyuan integrates

phenomenology and activism, manifesting his own

body as a farming tool. This innovative form with the

farmland to creates a venue of emotional resonance

and connection for the audience. The two-hour film

initiates with a shot of the Certificate of Land issued

by Dahankou Village in Hunan, symbolizing the

encroachment and reshaping of rural land belief under

urbanization policies. In the observation of his family

and the neighborhoods of the village, Li repetitively

jumps up and down on the moist soil on his deceased

father’s farmland (figure 2). The video end in him

collapsing into the muddy water, vomiting from

exhaustion and becoming a part of the paddy field

(Oredsson, 2019). Li Binyuan’s artistic languages,

characterized by suffering and stressful, incorporates

affective expediences and responds from audiences

into the performance, creating an interactive

phenomenological expression. His Sisyphean

mechanical jumps allegorically represent fragile

plight of farmer forced to leave their familiar rural

context due to the enduring long-standing

implications of urbanization, continuously oscillating

within the urban environments (Shi, 2022). However,

Li Binyuan’s ultimate action of submerging himself

in the muddy field metaphor aspiration of villager

long for return pastoral textures in traditional Chinese

agricultural structure. The Free Farming employs

sensible representation to visualizes the emotional

relationship and identity of farmers marginalized by

economic reform, reposing localized feelings of

displacement and offering dialogue site for citizens to

reconceptualize traditional life in villagescape.

Figure 2: Li, B.Y. Freedom Farming.

Furthermore, Zhang Huan utilizes a dark humor

performance to reveal the relationship between the

individual needs and the collective narratives in land

reform. In the phonographic work To Raise the Water

Level in a Fish Pond, Zhang Huan, who carry a child

on his shoulders, stands naked with forty temporary

migrant workers in a pond located in Beijing Park.

Exploration and Analysis of the Contemporary Chinese Art Activism as an Intervention in Urbanization

They gaze impassively beyond the viewfinder frame

of the camera in the scene of portrayed in a cold and

lime green palette (figure 3). Through this

orchestrated collective performance in the water,

Zhang transforms the pond into a space for

experiencing the natural landscape, metaphorically

reflecting the pollution and destruction of aquatic

environments resulting from urbanization (Lin,

2020).

Figure 3: Zhang, H. To Raise the water Level in a fish pond.

Additionally, Zhang Huan attempts to raise the

water level of the pond by one centimeter through the

collective effort of strangers. This activism of

intervention emphasizes the potential for microscopic

individual freedom and power for resistance within

the macroscopic ideological transformations and

influence. Nevertheless, the tragedy of the ethical

concern image stems from the futility of the action, as

the water level remains unchanged despite the

individual efforts. Instead, the participants, who are

depicted as powerless citizens, experience the

exploitation of societal transformation’s relentless

waves within the icy waters of the pond (NASHER,

n.d.). With urbanization accelerates, the self-

awareness and subjective meaning of individuals

appear insignificant. Zhang’s performance art

critiques and reflects on the inevitable harms of

urbanization, aspiring to establish an alternative

aesthetic imaginary for migrant workers and general

public.

The individual contexts that emerged during

China’s sociopolitical transformations evolved into

structural issues on societal scale, accompanying

challenges impact on the construction and recognition

of the national overall image. Artists who are aware

of the diminish of national imagination within highly

industrialized urban spaces seek to incorporate the

visual vocabulary of traditional art history into the

process of urbanization. They aspire to create

channels for cultural dialogue and perception

between citizens and the nation through balancing

modernity with a traditional aesthetic narrative.

5 THE ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

ABOUT THE NATIONAL IDEN-

TITY IN THE CHINESE UR-

BANIZATION

Top-down industrial development disrupts urban

cultural landscapes and public spiritual space,

resulting in the national identity crisis (Marinelli,

2015). In comparison with the Chinese flourishing

international stature in framework of public

diplomacy, the cultural identity of the citizens

presents signs of fatigue (Hu, 2023). The property

planning and infrastructure constructing, service to

dream of social transformation, led to supersized

sprawl to compresses the presence of historical

texture with urban spaces, disrupting sentimental

geographical connections. A significant number of

ancient architectures which embody cultural memory

have been leveled and destroyed, conceding to

spiritless building binge of modernity. This process

deprives citizens of the physical spaces necessary to

entrust and experience localized cultural affective

(Campanella, 2008).

Moreover, the economic stimulus of urbanization

exacerbates competitive life patterns and consumerist

ideology. Overcrowded residential environment and

intense commuting pressures enforce citizens to

devote their limited time to endless involution labor,

to exchange for opportunities that sustain life in the

city. Meanwhile, urban classes, constrained by stress

of capital accumulation, incapable to form habits of

life associated with subjectivity. Instead, they have to

embrace and obsess logic of capital, serve as a savior

for material and spiritual dilemmas within the

commercialization of the urban fabric (Lu & Zhang,

2020). Thus, the gentrified society creates a vicious

cycle of production and consumption, reinforcing the

atomization and fragmentation of the cultural climate

(Mirra, 2019). In the context of the prevailing trend

of ‘de-Europeanisation’, the international perspective

is increasingly oriented towards China’s cultural soft

power. The tensions of robust internal cultural pride

is a matter of significant concern (Salemink et al.,

2023). For this reason, Chinese artists integrated

localized narrative structures into the urbanization,

creating new local art practice, to address disjunctive

and antagonistic situation between the economic

reforms and traditional culture.

IESD 2025 - International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development

Figure 4: Ma, Y. S. Chaoyang Park Plaza.

The optimal solution is to search for cultural

symbols of subjectivity, integrate them with the

current pattern of change, and construct local

narratives to reduce the vulnerability of cultural

identity. The shanshui city designed by Ma Yansong

applies the artistic characteristics of traditional

Chinese Shan shui painting to architectural design

(figure 4), representing dissatisfaction and resistance

with the dehumanizing urban configurations resulted

from predatory architecture (Mirra, 2019). Through

his imitation of landscapes, the skyscrapers present

the soft streamlines, accompanied with luxuriant

vegetation, which enrich the weak fabric of urban

space. For instance, the Chaoyang Park Plaza

conforms to traditional concepts of Chinese

landscape painting and classical garden design. The

fluid and streamlined forms of the architectural

complex emulate the poetic imagery of layered

mountain ranges, creating sinuous and organic natural

contours. The extensive utilizing of glass curtain

walls adopts the classical garden technique of ‘scene

borrowing’, reflecting and showcasing the urban

texture and landscapes. This sustainable architectural

landscape which imbued with distinctive Chinese

aesthetic traditions and identity evokes a sense of

cultural belonging and inspires conceptualization of

the national future among citizens. It provides

residents of impersonal and machine-made cities with

a solution to connect with humanized environment on

a spiritual or philosophical level (Yang & Hu, 2017).

Moreover, the incorporation of traditional

philosophical concept of Chinese art present the

architect’s affective identification with Chinese

cultural discourse and ideology. This approach

contributes to capture and shape cultural values and

strengths characterized by coherence and continuity

during a period of social transformation (De Nigris,

2019).

Confronting the ambiguity of cultural identity,

artists experienced the influence of highly urbanized

environments are dedicated to translate and

refrigerate philosophies of traditional Chinese art into

modern narratives, addressing the anxiety of seeking

the cultural root and offering a creative expression of

national self-identity (Jiang, 2019). They aim to

promote Chinese citizens to reengage with their

cultural gene and establish enduring emotional

connections within a context of high mobility,

fostering a sense of national pride. From the

perspective of national identity, the past undoubtedly

informs the future (Li, 2019).

6 CONCLUSION

This research highlights the three dimensions

involved in China’s urbanized revolution, including

migrant workers, geo-cultural dynamics and national

image. It examines the social issues arising from

uncertainty while presenting the perspectives and

expression from artists. The essence of the dilemma

of social transformation in China is that the rush for

economic and political achievements has defused the

inherent narrative patterns of traditional society.

Regardless of the original context, it is essential for

individuals to recognize and adapt to the new social

structure and to make the changes. In this progress of

constant movement, citizen suffer the alienation in

daily lives and sense of cultural estrangement.

In the social transformation, artists assume the

responsibility to utilize artistic and cultural

productions as medium to reflect critically on social

problems and articulate the concerns for public and

themselves. Art activism, as a form of urban

intervention, captures, interprets, and conceives the

distinctiveness and critical aspects of contemporary

urbanization in China, aiming to create sustainable

and inclusive spaces within overcrowded urban

environments. This approach offers citizens a

localized connection to reimagine and experience

ancient traditional values and cultural specificity

while cultivating the potential for new forms of civic

Exploration and Analysis of the Contemporary Chinese Art Activism as an Intervention in Urbanization

engagement. Ultimately, through a narrative structure

creates by locational aesthetics and participatory art,

China would establish a strong foundation for the

people’s livelihoods and social harmony, while

manifesting a multifaceted and great national

branding image.

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