My Generation: 27 Artists from China

Chi Peng, (Chinese, born 1981, Shandong Province), Sprinting Forward 4, 2004, C-Print, 47 ¼” x 91 ½”.

Tampa Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg

The first U.S. exhibition focused solely on the post-Mao generation of Chinese artists will open simultaneously at the Tampa Museum of Art and the nearby Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg as part of a collaborative endeavor between these two institutions. Curated by arts journalist Barbara Pollack, who has covered the Chinese art scene since the late 1990s, this show offers a look at how China’s mega-development has impacted its youth culture and spawned new art trends.

All of the artists in this exhibition were born after 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution. Almost all of them are products of the one-child policy and grew up in a country with a high-powered market economy. All of them, whether educated in the West or not, have been exposed to global art movements through the Internet and increasingly liberalized education at China’s art academies. This curatorial project is an extended look at the new generation of artists who have emerged in mainland China since 2000, the year the country aggressively opened its doors to international artists and when Chinese artists began to command attention on the world stage. The exhibition is on view from June 7 through September 21, 2014.