Sasha Su-Ling Welland Livres

The biography explores the lives of two rival Chinese sisters navigating their quest for independence amidst social upheaval. As modern girls, they challenged traditional gender roles during a time of significant change, reflecting the evolving dynamics between men and women. Raised by an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, their professional journeys diverged dramatically from the expectations of their parents' generation, highlighting the impact of societal transformations on individual aspirations.

Examining the cultural and gender politics of Chinese contemporary art at the turn of the twenty-first century, Sasha Su-Ling Welland shows how artists, curators, officials, and urban planners negotiated the meanings of the avant- garde, built new cultural institutions, wrote new histories of Chinese art, and imagined new, more gender-inclusive worlds.