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Featuring 100 photographs by twenty of China’s most noteworthy, inventive, exciting and groundbreaking contemporary photographers, “Rooms Within China” by Denmark-based Tofu Collective forms both an inspiring time of 2021 photography and a comprehensive collection of contemporary Chinese photography.

Loosely following the theme of the “room,” the photographs by artists such as Pixy Liao, Xiaoxiao Xu, Feng Li, Gao Shan, Li Zhengde or Chen Ronghui explore rooms as a metaphor for human expression, as a universal (if infinitely changeable) setting for the private or public unfolding of fantasies or as stages for displaying life of groups, individuals or even humanity as a whole. Shaped not only by its close collaboration with the contributing photographers but also through feedback and advice by a broad range of people intimately familiar with current Chinese culture, “Rooms Within China” challenges conventional perspectives of China and offers an intriguing view on representation in the age of globalization.

“Just as a picture is worth more than a thousand words, a room inhabits more stories than are visible to the naked eye. How can we begin to develop an understanding of cultural diversity? And how might we approach it? Perhaps the best way is simply to take a look into new rooms and the lives that inhabit them.”
― from Tofu Collective’s foreword

“Rooms Within China is a gateway to a different narrative in which the many perceptions of China are not forced into inorganic homogeneity but left de-centralized, personal, and individual.”
― from He Yining’s afterword

Featured artists:
Chen Ronghui, Coca Dai, Feng Li, Gao Shan, Jialin Yan, Li Lin, Li Zhengde, Lin Zhipeng, Luo Yang, Pixy Liao, Shi Yangkun, Wang Lu, Wenjun Chen & Yanmei Jiang, Wenxin Zhang, Wu Liewei, Xiaoxiao Xu, Yan Cong, Yuyang Liu, Zhou Pinglang, Zhu Lanqing.

All texts included in English and Chinese.