This book examines Chinese a contemporary art through the lens of cultural political economy, with a focus on affect, geography, and artistic practice. This book develops a new approach, affective creative geography, to show how emotion, place, and lived experience shape artistic production in China and across global contexts.

Through nine case studies of Chinese contemporary artists, the chapters explore how regional environments, mobility, and social conditions influence creative methods and visual language. By foregrounding artists’ lived experiences, the book offers a new framework for understanding Chinese contemporary art beyond dominant Western interpretive models. It repositions Chinese art within its own cultural and intellectual contexts while contributing to broader debates in art history, cultural theory, and global contemporary art. This study will be of interest to scholars and readers working in Chinese art, affect theory, cultural political econonmy, creative geography, and visual studies.

Sophia Kidd is Associate Professor at Sichuan International Studies University and former Research Fellow at Sichuan University. She holds a PhD in Classical Chinese Literature and is the author of Culture Paves the New Silk Roads (Palgrave, 2022). Her research focuses on Chinese contemporary art, cultural political economy, and classical Chinese aesthetics.