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. 

They engage with global art discourses, adapt new and emergent technologies, reinvent art traditions and challenge sexual  and social taboos. Playful, irreverent, and sometimes downright subversive, their subjects range from desire to spiritual ecstasy, from solitude in a crowded world to traumatic memories, from the frontiers of neuro-science to experiences of diaspora. 

Some focus on the virtual landscape inhabited by billions of people across the globe;  they adapt the new languages of social media, music video and gaming, or satirise the aesthetics of the Chinese internet. Others confront shibboleths surrounding sex, birth, bodily frailty and death in works exploring the physical and psychological realities of being human. But whether they are savvy millennials, or the avant-garde pioneers who introduced Chinese contemporary art to the world, they refuse to be labelled or limited by gender, age or national identity.