Chinese history wasn’t always straight. While queerness may seem like a foreign import, its roots in China date back to ancient times. Bisexuality was the norm among emperors—Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty, for instance, openly took a ‘male favourite’. This was part of a broader history of same-sex relationships, non-normative sexualities and transgender identities that have largely been forgotten. Queer pasts are actively erased so that queer futures may cease to exist.

China’s digital age is a vibrant playground where memes, virtual WeChat stickers[1], puns, and jokes are used to bypass censorship and address politically sensitive topics. To keep up in this rapid-fire environment, phrases are often condensed into acronyms. The Chinese internet slang XSWL, short for “xiào sǐ wǒle” (笑死我了), means “laughing to death.” It echoes the English “LOL” but with a twist; when viewed more literally, it suggests that light-hearted fun might mask darker games at play.

Centuries ago, in ancient China, Tang dynasty alchemists embarked upon a daring quest for immortality. From the seclusion of their laboratories, bewitching transformations took place upon the flames of the furnace. With a magic brew of blood-red cinnabar, glistening gold, fickle mercury, and toxic lead, they sought to concoct an elixir of eternal life. Amidst this elusive pursuit, their experiments led to the invention of fire medicine, now known as gunpowder. What began as a search for longevity unwittingly gave rise to powerful tools of destruction; the impact of which we still feel today.

Beneath the glossy surface of progress lurks a simmering undercurrent of violence. Cities tear themselves apart to make way for towering skyscrapers and gleaming high-rises. However, in this bright new world, one question arises: where have all the people gone? Streets devoid of life and vacant apartment blocks stand as haunting reminders of an abandoned dream. Like solemn tombs from a long-lost civilisation, these forgotten monuments silently bear witness to the cost of rapid urbanisation, where each new creation necessitates the destruction of another.

Looking to the stars as they shone in the night sky, Zeng Liansong recalled the Chinese proverb: ‘longing for the stars, longing for the moon’. It inspired him to design the Five-Star Red Flag that would change the face of a nation. First raised in 1949 to mark the creation of the People’s Republic of China, a star was revealed for each of the four revolutionary classes: the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie. The largest star of all unifies these classes under the Chinese Communist Party.

When wandering through the streets of imperial China, amidst bazaars and teahouses, one might stumble across the figure of a storyteller. Crowds gather around this lone narrator, whose tales of mystical beasts, warriors, and immortals, infuse the air with enchantment. Yet in recent years Shuo Shu, or the art of storytelling, has become a dying tradition. Contemporary Chinese audiences have instead turned their attention to digital content.

The time between messages, the length between reunions, the distance between lovers – our intimate lives are filled with spaces. Whether they be passionate or painful, absences punctuate our daily routines with reminders of a beloved when they are no longer there. From heady first meetings to bittersweet goodbyes, throughout it all, love haunts us like a ghost.

Making it big in an Eastern country used to be a second choice for Western rockstars. Despite its multitude, the Chinese opinion was once considered inferior to established Western tastes. Yet China’s fast-paced transformation has turned the nation into a global powerhouse. These days companies, brands, and even nations from around the world all scramble to win the favour of Chinese consumers.

With a penchant for obscure metaphors and cryptic imagery, the “Misty Poets” were a little-known movement that flourished in China during the turbulent years between 1979 and 1989. Challenging Maoist artistic ideology, their poems, like the clouds themselves, were veiled and nebulous. Today, as creative restrictions continue to expand and contract in China, their legacy of ambiguity and oblique condemnation endures.

Xu Zhen (b 1977, Shanghai) is a leading figure among China’s younger generation of artists. This is the first major solo exhibition of his work in Australia and brings together early videos with more recent works, including paintings, tapestries and monumental sculptures.

THEN celebrates the great adventure of White Rabbit’s first decade: ten exciting years of showcasing the creative energy, daring and technical accomplishment of Chinese contemporary art. The gallery’s tenth anniversary exhibition presents works by more than 60 artists, all produced during the first ten years of Judith Neilson’s private collection (2000-2010). Some were highlights of the very first White Rabbit exhibition, in 2009.

Since Chinese contemporary art exploded onto the international stage in the 1990s, dramatic changes in Chinese society have, in turn, changed the nature of its art. HOT BLOOD presents a group of artists who confound outmoded expectations about China, reflecting unflinchingly on the most uncomfortable truths of our age.

In imperial China, scholars, painters and poets often retreated into the mountains in uncertain times, finding solace from political intrigue in the harmonious relationships of yin and yang in the natural world. The ancient Chinese believed that mountains were the home of the gods. Today, mountains are bulldozed to make way for new roads and high-speed rail lines leading to mega-cities and the skies above too often choked with ‘fog and haze’. This is the world of the artists shown in SUPERNATURAL.

In HG Wells’s novel “The Sleeper Awakes”, the hero emerges from a 200-year coma to find a world of brainwashed slaves ruled by a council of despots. “We were making the future,” he says, recalling his socialist youth, “and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making.”