Asian Art Resource Room

Base of Avant-garde Artists

The Beijing East Village, an artist village formed by performance artists and photographers, was formed in Dashanzhuang in the Chaoyang District of Beijing between 1993 and 1995. Zhang Huan and Ma Limning; the representative artists from the group, conducted risky performances under strict government surveillance, and artists such as Rong Rong and Ai Weiwei documented their actions. The Beijing East Village came to be known to people related to art domestically and internationally through these photographic documentations and represents the Chinese contemporary art of the mid-1990s.