The 10th edition of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai was held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center from May 8 to 11, 2025. Under the theme “The Age of Visual Voices,” the fair was organized into six sections, bringing together more than 100 galleries and art institutions from over 20 cities around the world. This event opened a dialogue around the photographic art ecosystem in Asia-Pacific as well as the overall development of contemporary image art.
At the same time, the fair launched the very first edition of the Shanghai International Contemporary Photo Festival (SICPF). This festival took place across the city in partnership with nearly twenty institutions and cultural spaces, such as Fotografiska Shanghai, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Longlati Foundation, Fujifilm X-Space, iE sPaCe, AFTERART PHOTOLAB, and others. This program resulted in “1 fair + 12 thematic exhibitions + 15 parallel exhibitions” spread across various locations in Shanghai.
This edition welcomed 65 young artists born in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, from China, a spectacular increase of 132.14% compared to the 28 artists present in 2024. This growth is explained not only by the overall expansion of the fair (1), but also by a reinforced mobilization of galleries and institutions in favor of emerging artists, driven by the growing interest in the art market for this new generation.
This article highlights seven promising young artists selected for a thematic exhibition and six galleries—five local and one French. These diverse organizations range from fledgling galleries to platforms actively involved in promoting and elevating emerging art scenes.
The works of these artists reflect a keen attention to social issues while probing the depths of personal experiences. These creations infuse the fair with vibrant energy and demonstrate the unique strength of China’s new generation of photographic artists.
Gao Yutao (高郁韬)
http://www.gaoyutao.com/
Born in 1988 in Hunan Province, Gao Yutao lives and works in Shanghai. In 2019, he graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in Germany. His work, which blends photography, installation, and video, explores memory, time, and everyday objects. Through a poetic approach, he seeks to transcend the banal functionality of ordinary things.
In his work Landing, presented by BONIAN SPACE, the underside of an Apple laptop becomes a guillotine blade, offering a stark reading of the tension between the apparent banality of technological objects and the geopolitical dynamics they underlie. The indication of the place of manufacture reveals the deep intertwining of Sino-American technological collaborations, while highlighting the fragility and uncertainty of these relationships in the current international context.
BONIAN SPACE
https://www.bonianspace.com/
Founded in Beijing in 2019, BONIAN SPACE focuses on discovering and supporting emerging contemporary artists. The space supports dynamic artists with a global perspective to develop their professional fields through various formats, such as exhibitions, academic research, and cultural outreach activities. BONIAN SPACE is committed to promoting international communication and cooperation between artists, the public, and multiple institutions, in order to explore new opportunities and possibilities in the context of contemporary art.
Jiang Xue (姜雪)
https://www.instagram.com/xue_jiang_j/
Originally from northeast China, Jiang Xue currently lives in Shanghai. A graduate of the National Film School in Łódź, Poland, she also studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her work, which focuses on photography, photobooks, installations, and video, explores the relationships between humans and their environment, the dynamics between subject and object, and questions the boundaries of identity and existence through an aesthetic tinged with surrealism.
In the thematic exhibition Holographic Ondulations (全息涟漪), presented as part of the fair, Jiang Xue questions “femininity as a condition.” She brings together more than twenty works from three different series, in which the photographed subjects often move on the edge between human and object. For the artist, each photograph is an autonomous entity—framed or unframed, it becomes a sculptural form in itself. She also seeks to provoke an encounter between the image and the viewer’s body by creating devices. Some works are printed on fabric. “If you need a cover, don’t hesitate to use my photos.” The audience’s body then becomes part of the experience, making physical contact with her work possible.
Holographic Undulations, Exhibition of Women’s Photography
Organized in collaboration with the Kesong community as part of the She Shines Image Month initiated by the fair, the Holographic Undulations exhibition combines the creations of five female artists—Wang Yingying, Jiang Hanxuan, Qian Ruya, Jiang Xue, and Xia Qiji—with photographic productions from the community. This exhibition proposes a dialogue between professional artistic practices and productions from social networks, in a single resonant space. Holographic Undulations thus constitutes a collective convocation of feminine visual languages, and aims to arouse multiple resonances. The exhibition highlights the plurality of contemporary feminine expressions and affirms the subjectivity of the creators.
Lean Lui (雷安喬)
https://www.leanlui.com/
Lean Lui is an artist and photographer based in Hong Kong. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, she currently teaches in the Contemporary Photography program at HKU SPACE (HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education). Her work explores the transformations of intimacy and bodily perception in contemporary societies, interrogating the vulnerability of individuals in a fundamentally imperfect world.
Presented by the PETITREE gallery, her personal project draws inspiration from the textures and shapes of human skin and flesh, using elements imbued with femininity to gently reconfigure the implicit power relations between young girls and society. The scars on the body become bow ties or declarations of love. In her delicate visual language, the subjectivity of young women emerges at the intersection of desire, pain, and injury. The universe she constructs is a paradoxical space, both cruel and safe, where the pure and the impure merge, and where temptation coexists with restraint.
PETITREE
https://www.petitree.co/
Founded in 2024 in Shekou (Shenzhen), PETITREE is an art space dedicated to the emergence and expression of local creative forces. It aims to be a place of encounter and fertile friction.
The name “PETITREE” is derived from a play on language and sound: born from the variation of the lips and mouth, it becomes an autonomous entity, an invitation to explore art and life. “PETIT” is a way of recalling our own microscopic scale in the face of time and space. It is through this smallness that a heightened awareness of oneself and a renewed respect for expression are born. The suffix “TREE” echoes the space’s surroundings: dense roots, vigorous growth, and a nourishing energy for sensitive intuition. PETITREE advocates a conscious reading of matter and a singular vision of space, offering a free and vibrant terrain for continuous creation.
Liang Xiu (良秀)
https://www.instagram.com/liangxiu91/
Born in 1994, Liang Xiu lives and works in Shandong Province. She has been practicing photography since 2016. With an almost voyeuristic gaze, she observes and captures phenomena on the margins of Chinese society, rooted in everyday life, and unreservedly displays her own feelings about reality in front of the camera. Her images, both crude and delicate, reveal realities often rejected by the traditional Chinese social and cultural system, and address essential questions related to survival: economic disparities, the roles of women, and sexual orientations.
Three Shadows +3 Gallery exhibited Summoning, a work from her Before Becoming a Butterfly series. Liang Xiu weaves connections between her personal experiences in intimate relationships and her childhood environment. She translates the dreamlike visions of her mind into images, while documenting her emotions and fragments of life. For her, photography becomes a passage between the inner world and reality, a means of seeking a balance between the two. At a pivotal time in her life when she must choose between the ideal and the real, the artist attempts to blend these two poles, to reconcile tensions and contradictions.
Three Shadows +3 Gallery (三影堂+3画廊)
https://www.threeshadows.cn/
Three Shadows +3 Gallery is a contemporary art space affiliated with the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. Founded in April 2012, +3 Gallery strives to bridge the past, present, and future of photography in China, while fostering artistic and cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world, with photography as its primary medium.
The gallery’s mission is to promote the most representative and promising Chinese photographic artists, while also specifically exhibiting major works by international artists. By collaborating with major art institutions and art fairs in China and abroad, +3 Gallery actively works to promote and promote Chinese photography internationally.
Sun Can (孙灿)
https://www.suncannot.com/
Born in 1992 in China, Sun Can lives and works between London and Taipei. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, he holds a double master’s degree in political science and visual arts. His work explores the absurdity of the contemporary world and the fragility of human relationships, constantly oscillating between humor and pain, tragedy and comedy.
During the fair, Mandy Zhang Art Gallery is presenting his personal project, Absurd Poetry. Drawing on the concept of “instant sculpture,” Sun Can transforms everyday objects—apples, flowers, candles—into ephemeral sculptures that he photographs to capture their fleeting moment, exploring the boundaries between sculpture and photography. Through a surreal reconstruction of everyday scenes, the artist adopts a playful approach to resisting the surrounding absurdity. By injecting conflict and paradoxes into his staging, he reveals the latent chaos and absurdity of ordinary life.
Mandy Zhang Art
https://mandyzhang.art/
Founded in 2022 in London’s Marylebone district, Mandy Zhang Art is an art space dedicated to the discovery and promotion of contemporary Asian art. It showcases a new generation of artists from Asia through carefully curated exhibitions exploring themes such as ethnic identity, cultural decolonization, and practices of care.
Painting, installation, photography: the gallery explores a wide variety of mediums. Mandy Zhang Art aims to showcase the richness of Asian culture and act as a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures. Through its exhibitions and events, it offers artists a platform for dialogue and understanding, while helping them push their creative boundaries and engage in constructive dialogue.
Zhang Wenxin (张文心)
https://www.zhangwenxin.com/
Born in 1989, Zhang Wenxin graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. She lives and works in Hangzhou. Defining herself as a “terrain constructor,” she seeks not to depict landscapes or wonders, but to simulate the complex terrains between human and non-human minds. She uses images, films, installations, and soundscapes to spark perceptual journeys that invite the viewer to delve into the layers where mechanical and magical time intertwine.
ShanghART Gallery presents five of her works, including four from the series Notes of the Hollow (2021–), a photographic series made in karst caves. The cave is a central motif in her practice: the artist says she was called to it in a dream. Her works explore the relationship between photography, cave, and the human body. For her, the cave is a three-dimensional film whose mineral crystals echo the silver grains of the photograph, while the human eye ensures the conversion between light and darkness. In Eye of the Cavern, it is within a semi-artificial mine that a face-off between the eye of the cave and the human eye occurs—an encounter between human time and geological time. The exhibition, similar to a cave, also invites the public to explore the connections between body, cavity, and telluric temporality.
ShanghART Gallery (香格纳画廊)
https://www.shanghartgallery.com/
Founded in 1996, ShanghART Gallery is one of the leading contemporary art galleries in China, with galleries in Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore.
For over twenty years, ShanghART Gallery has been dedicated to the development of contemporary art in China, maintaining close and long-term collaborations with over 60 artists. It presents high-quality contemporary art exhibitions and projects, participates in major international art fairs, and cultivates strong partnerships with major world-renowned academies and art institutions.
Etienne Francey (艾蒂安·弗朗西)
https://etiennefrancey.ch/
Born in 1997, Etienne Francey lives and works in Fribourg, Switzerland. A graduate of the Vevey School of Photography, he began exploring nature at the age of 9 with his first camera. Through experimental photographic processes, he strives to transform, distort, and color his subjects, revisiting the way we perceive reality.
Presented by the French gallery Fisheye Gallery, his ongoing project, Etudes Florales, explores an aesthetic of nature without recourse to digital retouching. Through physical and optical interventions, he reveals the invisible subtleties of the plant world. Inspired by Impressionism, and in particular Claude Monet, Francey sees himself as a painter with a camera. He attempts to strip nature of its figurative form and lead it toward abstraction, in search of simplicity. His works are both reflections of his inner world and poetic odes to nature. At the border between realism and abstraction, they open up a space for the viewer to sensitive contemplation.
Fisheye Gallery
http://fisheyegallery.fr
Opened in October 2016, Fisheye Gallery is located in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, in a space exclusively dedicated to contemporary photography, a stone’s throw from the Canal Saint-Martin. With a second 200 m² space in Arles, the gallery is proud to represent artists with diverse styles. As a young gallery, Fisheye Gallery strives to stand out by offering an uninhibited program of emerging international artists.
It assumes its role as a pioneer of new photographic writings in major European fairs as well as in front of public institutions and photography professionals. The gallery is chaired by Benoît Baume, co-founder of the Fisheye group, whose magazine of the same name is dedicated to current photography and the role of this art in our society from an economic, cultural and sociological point of view.
Deng Qiwen
[1] Art Writer Alliance DING, DING ! 65 Chinese from the 80s, 90s et 00s were presented at the art fair 2025 Images Shanghai Art Fair, May 13 2025: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/9QWCvfDYa5mFwahKZSaSRA
