China has witnessed the empowerment of women in contemporary art. These artists have moved beyond the borders of geography to explore philosophy, psychology and gender, from the 1960s generation to a young, curious, technologically savvy generation, both gaining recognition both at home and abroad.

Here are some of our favorite Chinese female artists that are setting the tone for the future of the movement.

CAO FEI

Cao Fei is an internationally-renowned Chinese contemporary artist, currently living in Beijing, she mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and developmental changes that are occurring in Chinese society today.

Her recent solo exhibitions include: SCAD Museum of Art (2024); Lenbachhaus Munich (2024); Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai (2024); Pinacoteca Contemporânea, São Paulo (2023); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022); UCCA, Beijing (2021); MAXXI, Rome (2021); Serpentine Galleries, London (2020); Centre de Pompidou, Paris (2019); Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2018); K21 Düsseldorf (2018). And Sharjah Biennial (2023); Aichi Triennale (2022); Venice Biennale (2003, 2007 and 2015); Yokohama Triennale (2008); Istanbul Biennial (2007) ; Biennale of Sydney (2006 & 2010); Taipei Biennial (2006); Moscow Biennale (2005); and Shanghai Biennale (2004).

LIN TIANMIAO

Lin Tianmiao is among the most iconic and pioneering contemporary Chinese female artists. Lin is best known for her large-scale sculptures and installations, as well as a variety of other media to study the relationship between women’s identity and the conventional social role of woman as mother.

Her work is in the public collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Denver Art Museum; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Hong Kong Museum of Art; Singapore Art Museum; the Asia Society, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong, and others.

LIANG YUANWEI

Liang Yuanwei draws inspiration from the fabric patterns of everyday life. Employing simple yet repetitive brushstrokes, Liang associates her emotional experiences with the aesthetics and heritage from the Chinese Tang and Song dynasties, ancient Greece and Rome, to the Renaissance. With a thorough approach to conceptuality and materiality, she constantly experiments on her visual language in pursuit of the spiritual dimension of Classicism.

Notable collections: M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing; the White Rabbit Collection, Sydney; the K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; the DSL Collection, Paris; Fosun Art Foundation, Shanghai; Golden Eagle Museum of Art, Nanjing; Long Museum, Shanghai, and Sifang Contemporary Art Museu, Nanjing.

ZHOU LI

Suggesting a flow and movement which reflects Zhou Li’s own restless self-examination, in her paintings Zhou explores the relationship of emotions to perception and the fusion of the logical and illogical within inner consciousness, ideas which lie at the core of ancient Chinese philosophy.

Zhou’s recent solo exhibitions include: Jebum-gang Art Center, Tibet (2024); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence (2023); Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning (2024); Guangdong Museum of Art (2020); White Cube Bermondsey, London (2019); and Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2017).

SUN YITIAN

Sun Yitian is best known for her paintings of mass-produced objects, generally based on staged photographs taken by the artist herself. Lovingly rendered in colorful acrylic paint, the surfaces of the inflatable toys or severed dolls heads—both frequent motifs—shine brightly, often with flecks of reflecting camera lights visible. The paintings’ aesthetic is a quality of the painting process: Seen up close, the photographic precision dissolves, as the painterly and coloristic effects created by the artist’s expert application of paint become apparent.

Carefully placed to seduce our gaze—to “remove all resistance to perception” in Sun Yitian’s words—the subtlety of this effect allows the works to exist in a continuously contested realm between representation and abstraction.

Notable collections: Hort Family Collection, New York; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; M WOODS, Beijing; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing and Long Museum, Shanghai.

In 2024, Louis Vuitton globally released a special collection in collaboration with Sun Yitian.

In 2023 Sun Yitian received the WSJ China’s ON THE FIELD Creator of the Year Award and “BOB Best of the Best” 2022 Young Artist Award. Sun was selected for the Influential 2023: Forbes China Contemporary Young Artists and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Class of 2019.

SONG KUN

Song Kun earned her MFA in 2006 from the oil painting department of the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA). Song’s practice focuses on painting, while incorporating music live, video, installation and other media. The honesty and emotional power in her work align her with “ the few artists who have stablished their own unique vocabularies of figurative painting in the contemporary art scene ”. In her works, she observes and captures the different figures and fleeting moments in reality and hyper-reality world, She gathers up the fragments of our time, at the same time makes the elements restructuring. As a result, her works constitute a mythical, private spatiality that reflects the potential changes in China.

Notable collections: Giraud Pissarro Segalot, USA; Francois Pinault, France; Uli Sigg, Switzerland; CAFA Art Museum, China; M+ Museum, Hongkong; Long Museum, China; Minsheng Art Museum, China; New Century Art Foundation, China; Start Museum, Shanghai, China; CC Foundation & Art Center, China; Zhi Art Museum, China; TANK, China; Song Art Museum, Beijing.