Call for Papers - From the Masses to the Masses: Visual Practices in China since the Cultural Revolution

60 years ago in May, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was officially launched under the guiding principles issued by the Central Session of the Chinese Communist Party culminating, despite its top-down directive, in a bottom-up mass movement across the country. Two key events heralded the Cultural Revolution nationwide: the popularisation of the big-character poster () and the emergence of the Red Guards. On 25 May 1966, a big-character poster spontaneously generated by seven staff members from the Department of Philosophy appeared at Peking University overtly criticising the University leaders. Within a few hours, more than one thousand big-character posters appeared on campus. This can be seen as the genuine start of the mass movement, visually announced in a public space. Then, on 29 May, the term Red Guards was first mentioned among teenage students at the elite Tsinghua University and subsequently appeared as a signature on a big character poster. Other secondary school students in Beijing followed suit by establishing their own Red Guards organisations, pioneering a mass movement. Over the summer of 1966, visual images of ‘the whole country being awash with red’ became emblematic for the Cultural Revolution in the collective memory for generations.

This symposium marks these two anniversaries by re-examining the role of ‘mass-art’ in the contemporary context. At CCVA’s 9^th Annual Conference , ten years ago at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, we discussed art production developed during political campaigns and the advent of new aesthetics, ideologies and culture shaped through visual and performing arts. This year’s symposium will take place at the University of Westminster which hosts one of the largest archives of Chinese propaganda posters, we take the two events in May 1966 as a symbolic anchor to re-examine so-called ‘mass art’ in the contemporary context.

The aesthetic and political agency of bottom-up activity and mass art merits further discussion, notably in terms of its contradictory and oscillating relationship with authority. The notion of ‘mass art’ first emerged in Mao’s Talks at Yan’anForum in 1942, and its prescribed bottom-up approach became central strategy. Since then, the Democracy Wall of Xidan (1978–79) is but one example of a continued practice of public writing and image production as a form of political expression, petition, and modes of mass visual practice, even though subversive expressions were ultimately quelled.

Today, ‘mass art’ continues to evolve in diverse forms within the changing cultural and political contexts of contemporary China, be it through spontaneous visual production on the Internet and social media or in more physically and vernacular forms, including handmade and ad-hoc posters, banners and signage, as well as protest assemblages, and through performances, demonstrations and other socially-engaged practices. From isolated artist communes such as Anhui’s Bishan village, shut down by the central government in 2016, to urban dwellers publicly congregating for collective dance, the interactions between bottom-up and top-down continue to be both dynamic and precarious.

We encourage papers from a variety of subject areas to develop new understandings of ‘mass art’ through interdisciplinary perspectives, both within the context of the Cultural Revolution and how it has it been extended in contemporary China. Papers engaging the Westminster archive will be particularly welcome.

Contributors are invited to explore the following set of ‘relationships’ without being limited to these

• Art, mass art and non-art
• Bottom-up practices and top-down directives
• Practitioners, participants and audience
• Assembly, collectivity and productivity
• Spontaneousness, impulse and improvisation
• Presentations, metaphors and censorship
• Participation, interruption and invasion

Please submit one single document by 27 February 2026 with the filename ‘CCVA-CCC Symposium 2026_your name’, containing

1) an abstract of up to 300 words;

2) a 100-word biography, contact information and any institutional affiliation by email to

 ccva@bcu.ac.uk, Dr. Federica Mirra (federica.mirra@bcu.ac.uk) and Professor Jiang Jiehong (joshua.jiang@bcu.ac.uk).

Participants from all career stages are welcome.

Following the conference, selected papers will be invited for peer-reviewed publication in the (indexed by Scopus), to be published by Intellect (Bristol) in the UK.