Published by Frauenmuseum Bonn / I O Cultural Network e.V. + Bald Girls Group 2025.
Article Authors: Juan Xu, Julia Heintz, Jerome Silbergeld, Gao Minglu, Claire Roberts, Wen Pulin, Monic Merlin, Tench Martin-Liao, Xiao Lu.
01 / Aug / 2026
In 1988 I was a student in the 1988 graduation class of the Oil Painting Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art)1 and had embarked on the tense period of creating my graduation work.
Speaking on the basis of its lack of an avant-garde directing theory, the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition does not have an avant-garde character.
“Radio Free Asia” reported: Dissatisfied with collector Geoff Raby’s whitewashing of the CCP, Chinese artist Xiao Lu refused to attend the Sydney Art Exhibition. Reported link: https://bit.ly/3S3RLD9 This is a letter I wrote to Steven Alderton, CEO of the National Art School in Sydney, told him why I decline Geoff Raby. This is why I decline …
Whenever I look back at my works, it is like going back to a certain moment of that former me. The overlapping of past and present, the collision of time and life intertwined together, can always find traces of survival in the crevices of the works.
The inescapable focus of any commentary on the art of Chinese-born female artist Xiao Lu is the action of her firing a gun into her installation Dialogue 对话 (1988-89).
On 5 September 2015, at the Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden, performance artist Xiao Lu (b.1962) poured buckets of black ink and water over her head in an almost trance-like ritual of self-immersion and re-emergence. Her apparently simple actions, viscerally shocking to view, embodied Xiao’s complex responses to gendered lived experiences and …
Stepping Out! Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art is the first book and exhibition in twenty-five years to present a broadly representative selection of works by China’s contemporary women artists.
Through its various academic research and exhibition activities, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) is engaged in multifaceted efforts to establish the place of Korean modern and contemporary art history within the dynamic currents of contemporary art in Asia and throughout the world.
“We should all be feminists!” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) —In Europe and the United States, feminism has long since become part of popular culture. Yet, despite global movements, demonstrations, and petitions to establish equality, it is still not possible in the twenty-first century to speak of comprehensive gender equality with regard to women and LGBTQIA+ communities-not in any country of the world.
Host: Claire Roberts Artist: Xiao Lu Theme: Art + Courage, CoVA Creating Futures Seminar series Sponsor: The University of Melbourne Time: 2021.10.23 Mode: Online from Zoom Adelaide / Sydney Translator: Liu Wanling Coversation video online link: https://sites.research.unimelb.edu.au/…/dia…/art-courage Claire Roberts: Hello Xiao Lu, it is great to have this opportunity to talk about your thoughts …
This is not a monograph on the history of women artists or an art-historical survey of ‘women’s art’. It is thirty-four perspectives on pivotal moments in, and key contributions to, the field of art and design by women, all drawn from the NGV Collection. The idea of persistence was the inspiration for this publication.
Book: A History of Contemporary Chinese Art / In English Author: Zhou Yan Publication: Springer Press 2020 Page 238-40
In late May 2011, escaping the behemoth art fair ArtHK. I caught the subway to the end of the Hong Kong Island line.
On 5 February 1989, two gunshots were fired at Dialogue, an installation art work in the exhibition China/Avant-Garde at China’s National Art Gallery in Beijing. This event was the first officially sanctioned exhibition of ‘unofficial’ art held in post-Mao China.
02 / Feb / 2020
I recently saw a very colourful Xiao Lu. One of her hands was wrapped in white bandage, previously wounded during her “Polar” exhibition, whilst the other hand maneuvered the steering wheel with ease.
Born to two Socialist Realism painters shortly before China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Xiao was exposed to art and politics from a young age. She attended the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, with the work shown in this image serving as her graduation piece.
Danish Cultural Center, 798 Arts District, Beijing, China (23 October 2016). Photographs by Yi Zhilei. Exhibition view: Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (19 January–24 March 2019). Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kai Wasikowski (2019), for 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art.
31 / Jul / 2017
Book: Art And China After 1989 Theater of the World ( In English ) Author: Alexandra Monroe, Philip Tinari, Hou Hanru Press: @2017 The Soloman R. Guggenheim Foundation. Xiao Lu’s work Dialogue including in this book.
To see the problems clearly, you have to view in the dimension of time. “More than twenty years” is quite a lengthy stretch of history for an individual, but in terms of art history, it may be quite short.
XIAO LU 肖鲁 Xiao Lu (born 1962) works with performance, installation and video. She gained fame by shooting her own installation, Dialogue, at the opening of the China Avant-garde exhibition in 1989. After a period of silence, Xiao returned to Beijing in 2003 and since then has produced works with highly personal as well as …
The discussion centered on whether it is meaningful for Xiao Lu to be “naked,” and whether her art conforms to rules: a. Can the church’s taboo be removed with “nakedness” without the slightest hesitancy?
Focus and Freeze-Revisiting Dialogue By Hu Xiaolan On 5 February 1989, on the traditional Chinese New Year’s Eve, about two hours after the China/Avantgarde Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China Beijing opened, the female artist Xiao Lu, who was 26 at the time, fired two shots in quick succession at her …
Book: CONTEMPORARY ART” ( World Currents) / In English
Author: Terry Smith
Publication: 2011 Laurence King Publishing
Book: Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Chinese Art / In English,
Author: Gao Minglu,
Publication: The MIT Press 2011
On 5 February 1989, on the traditional Chinese New Year’s Eve, about two hours after the China/Avantgarde Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China Beijing opened, the female artist Xiao Lu, who was 26 at the time, fired two shots in quick succession at her own installation work Dialogue. The sound of …
it was the first time that I broke my silence to talk about Dialogue in public in the whole period from 1989 to 2004. This process was so long. These things are all described in my novel “Dialogue”. You can read about it later.
Although Xiao Lu’s Dialogue is written in the form of a novel, it is based on a true story. However, it is not only the story of a single individual. At the same time it presents a particularly important event in the history of Chinese contemporary art.
