Urban transformations and contemporary art in China

In the recent decades, China has experienced an ‘urban revolution’ (e.g. Wu 2007; Campanella 2008), whose scale and speed are unprecedented in human history for both the increase of construction projects and urban population. Existing scholarship on the topic explores the tangible and quantifiable aspects of the urban transformation, such as policy changes, physical development and expansion of cities including the construction boom, rural-urban migration, and inevitably, widening social inequality (e.g., Friedmann 2005; Hsing 2010; Zhang 2011). At the same time, more attention should be given to the intangible processes of transformation, such as how individual urban residents experience and perceive their changing cities through cultural means for a more holistic and multifaceted understanding of urban aspiration and its consequences in China.