China’s Tech Boom Has Inspired a Wave of Internet-Related Art

These artists are critiquing how technology promotes consumerism, shapes identity, and enables new forms of censorship

Xu Wenkai’s painting ‘404404404’ echoes the manual labor required to maintain China’s “Great Firewall” by serially repeating the error message that greets visitors to banned webpages. Photo courtesy of the artist

By Josh Feola

Consumerism

The rise of a distinctive e-commerce culture is among the most striking changes the internet has wrought in China. Over $30 billion in merchandise traded hands on Alibaba platforms alone last November 11, a consumer holiday known as Singles’ Day, which dwarfs the US’s Black Friday. Most of those sales took place on Taobao, Alibaba’s principal consumer-facing website and app. Running on Taobao, a series by Hong Kong artist Mak Ying Tung 2, comprises photographs of oversized treadmills that Mak found on Taobao. She enlarged the stock photographs and embedded stills from movies like Iron Man and Star Wars on the treadmills’ screens to present an absurd and unsettling vision of humanity enslaved to in-app purchases and streaming entertainment. If Taobao has given rise to a new consumerist creed, artists like Mak are articulating a speculative iconography to match.

Mak Ying Tung 2, Running on Taobao