Art and Work

Today, art and work are often imagined as two opposing conditions. On one side are commuting, meetings, deadlines, and the pressures of making a living; on the other lies the ideal of artistic freedom, creativity, and self-expression. Yet viewed from a longer historical perspective, the notion of the professional artist is a relatively recent one. Whether in the artist system that gradually emerged in the modern West or in the tradition of the Chinese literati, who cultivated painting and calligraphy alongside official life, artistic practice has long been intertwined with labour, occupation, and social identity. Many artists were simultaneously artisans, civil servants, or teachers.

In the contemporary moment, this relationship has become even more complex. Digital life, platform economies, and increasingly fluid patterns of work have led many young practitioners to inhabit multiple identities at once: artist, employee, freelancer, project collaborator, content creator. Artistic practice likewise unfolds in offices, on daily commutes, in rented apartments, amid endless streams of information, and during the fragments of time between work. Rather than existing as clearly separate realms, art and work increasingly intersect, with artists turning back to everyday experience as a source of new perception and expression.

As the featured artists of Editions 6 and 7 of Taikang Art Museum’s Rehearsal: Artist Solo Project, Liu Xinyi and Song Ziwei each respond to this contemporary condition from distinct perspectives. Liu Xinyi’s Standby recreates the interface of digital life through a self-service enquiry system and a virtual artwork platform, exploring conditions such as “emotional value,” “user profiling,” and “decision paralysis” to evoke a state of perpetual connectivity that never quite begins. Song Ziwei’s Perfect Days, by contrast, draws upon personal experiences of wage labour, transforming offices, audio guides, lottery tickets, workplace complaints, and repetitive routines into an artistic language of perception and survival. Several works, including Audio Guide, also invite Taikang employees to participate in the creative process, documenting office spaces, daily rhythms, and individual experiences to establish a direct dialogue between the museum and the workplaces above it.

For this reason, the conversation has been scheduled on International Museum Day, 18 May. Although the event falls on a Monday, Taikang Art Museum will remain specially open to the public, offering visitors an opportunity to encounter art during the familiar rhythm of the working week’s lunch break.

Open to audiences both within and beyond the art world, this event asks a broader set of questions. Why do we continue to need spaces for expression, documentation, and creativity beyond the demands of everyday life? In an age defined by efficiency, digital platforms, and constant connectivity, can art still offer a way of rediscovering life and reaffirming our sense of self? Can the subtle experiences that emerge in offices, at desks, in meetings, on the subway, and throughout the routines of daily life also become sources of creativity?

Moderated by Xin Yunpeng, curator of the Rehearsal programme, together with Ruan Jingjing, Research Fellow at Taikang Art Museum, the discussion brings together artists Liu Xinyi, Song Ziwei, and Hu Qingtai, alongside curator Yao Mengxi. Taking place at the intersection of the office building and the museum, this lunchtime conversation seeks to return art to the fabric of everyday life—as an experience that anyone can enter, participate in, and share.