Liu Ding (b.1976, Changzhou, China, lives in Beijing) pursues a research-based practice that manifests in a range of media, from painting to theatre production, as well as curatorial and theoretical work. His most recent work involves appropriating the aesthetics and creative system of Chinese socialist realism, particularly in painting, to reappraise its legacy in art and visual culture. Through contrasts and comparisons between past and present archetypes, Liu examines shifting ideas of the model citizen, the role of artists and intellectuals in society, and conditions of cultural production and historical knowledge. Typified by a large, politically loaded rendering of the year 1989 in the corner of a computer desktop window, Liu's paintings address emergent forms and conventions of seeing, showing and experiencing enabled by new technologies, with significant implications for public discourse in China and elsewhere.