From growing up in a remote Chinese village to working and residing in Perth, Tami is the exception to the rule; a needle plucked from the haystack of systematic poverty and granted a chance at tertiary education and class mobility. What sounds like something out of the Hunger Games is normal for tens of millions. The gaokao, China’s national college-entrance exam, is notorious as the world’s toughest yet it is skewed against rural students. There is a 10-year lag in rural versus urban education, provincial intake quotas and a household registration system that governs where students may sit the test.

Photography became an important medium for the expression and documentation of personal histories in China, and often a means for oblique social criticism. The contemporary photography of Wang Qingsong, Muchen and Shao Yinong is imbued with this history. This essay traces the evolution of Chinese photography and critical discourse in the late 1970s to interpret the contemporary work of these artists.

On a humid Friday afternoon in July 2019, a group of art history students from the University of Western Australia arrived at the residence of artists and couple Shao Yinong and Muchen. Welcoming the group into their home, the artists presented and discussed their work, before beginning an informal Q&A.

Photography has, over the last two decades, proven to be a tactical vehicle for criticism of the tedious socio-political condition of Chinese society. Communist China’s increasingly large place in the global capitalist market, and the local repercussions of consumerist Western influence fuel the criticism and satire of artists such as Wang Qingsong, and Muchen and Shao Yingong.