ART & CULTURE

Winner: All Rounder Ai Weiwei

Artist, blogger, architect, social commentator, activist and all around provocateur – Ai Weiwei sure made a lot of headlines this year. He might look like a teddy bear, but this year he demonstrated more strongly then ever that he’s prepared to talk tough in the face of perceived injustice.

In March, after several months of 'citizen investigation' he published the names of more than 5,000 schoolchildren killed in last year’s Sichuan earthquake on his blog. At the time, he wrote: "Life has its own dignity. You cannot give us just numbers. What are their names? Who are their parents?" His site quickly and quietly disappeared.

Then, in August, when he travelled to Sichuan as a witness in the trial of Tan Zuoren (who is accused of subversion after campaigning against poorly constructed schools), Ai claims he was detained and beaten by police. The result of this altercation, he says, was the year’s most talked about subdural haematoma.

He underwent an operation for the condition while in Germany for a solo exhibition last September. The highly-publicised show, called ‘So Sorry’, included a frieze of children’s backpacks that covered the entire front wall of the exhibition centre as a requiem to the child victims of Sichuan’s earthquake.

Recently, after urging Barack Obama to make human rights a major issue during his trip to China, Ai made public his disappointment with the diplomatic approach favoured by the US President.

“Many Chinese, especially the young, hope for a more open and just society – this needs the support of foreign leaders,” Ai told AFP.

“I agree with some of the people who see his visit as a big Hollywood show. If he does not make a greater effort, the Chinese will become disappointed with these 'universal values' as well as with the United States.”

It’s impossible to predict what’s in store for Ai in 2010, but it seems unlikely he will be looking to settle down to enjoy life in the slow lane.

Runner Up: Realist Filmmaker Jia Zhangke

He has made a name for himself with his slightly controversial indie films, but in 2009, director Jia Zhangke seems to have hit a turning point.

Jia is known for movies that depict a less glamorous China – films that take the risk of portraying the struggles of the country’s working class through a mix of fiction and documentary. His 1997 movie Xiao Wu earned him a one-year ban on making films. And in 2006, Jia’s Still Life – which tells a story about demolition workers dismantling a Chinese village to make way for the Three Gorges Dam – earned him international acclaim with the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award.

But this year, Jia has moved more mainstream, showing that he's not just a dissident indie director. He started his own studio and filmed a China Mobile advertisement. In a cautious move, Jia even pulled out of the Melbourne International Film Festival to avoid looking like he supported Rebiya Kadeer – the exiled Uighur leader accused of instigating riots in Xinjiang – and he is also helping Shanghai officials make a documentary for the 2010 Expo.

“[Jia Zhangke] has been compared and contrasted to Zhang Yimou,” says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a history professor at the University of California-Irvine and co-editor of China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance. “So there's a special interest in seeing how differently he handles the challenge of a production linked to a big international event like the Expo.”

Jia's commercial successes do not mean he's abandoning his roots just yet. With his arrival in the mainstream of the Chinese film industry, the director may be able to push the envelope with his craft and reach the masses.

Runner Up: China’s Looking Glass Lu Guang

In Lu Guang’s photographs, a woman in a red sweater looks out to a Guangdong pond filled with more waste than water. Another image shows two 'black dragons' in Inner Mongolia – the Lasengmiao Power Plant pumping blackened smoke into the sky, casting nearby villages into shadow.

Originally from Zhejiang, Lu is the 2009 winner of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, a worthy nod for his passion and commitment to documenting ecological disasters in China since 2005. With his US$30,000 grant, Lu plans to continue his quest to show the environmental and human toll that comes along with China’s modern industrial revolution.

From factory worker to amateur photojournalist, Lu worked in a silk factory in his hometown of Yongkang County in 1980 when he held a camera for the first time. Since studying at the Fine Arts Academy of Tsinghua University, the photographer has created a number of photo essays on major social and environmental issues in China, including his series on AIDS villages in Henan province.