Since the beginning of China's economic boom in the late 1980s and its ever-increasing influence on globalized society, the country's burgeoning contemporary art scene has attracted great attention around the world. However, despite the Chinese art market's emergence as a highly prolific industry and a growing international recognition of contemporary art from China, there is a remarkable lack of Chinese women artists represented in (inter-)national exhibitions and publications. Stepping Out! is the first comprehensive publication in 25 years to present a broadly representative selection of the work of contemporary Chinese female artists, including pioneering as well as emerging artists thus far little known abroad. Through an enormous wealth of perspectives, the artists reveal personal and social fears, contradictions, and hopes in the tense field occupied by powerful tradition, and shed light upon the search for identity both as a woman and as an artist within a rapidly changing Chinese society. Stepping Out! features more than 100 artworks by 27 artists born between 1960 and 1994 living in mainland China, including Wen Hui, Cao Fei, Lin Tianmiao, Xing Danwen, Yin Yiuzhen, Ma Qiusha, Xiao Lu, Luo Yang and Tong Wenmin.

Wiebke Siem (1954 Kiel, DE – Berlin, DE) became known in the 1990s for extensive installations in which she alienated everyday objects, such as pieces of clothing, shoes, bags, or toys, or transformed them into oversized objects. Wiebke Siems uses pieces of furniture, objects, and materials with domestic connotations and whimsical, often puppet-like figures to create psychologically charged installations that are as oppressive as they are humorous and that raise questions about societal role models. Siem’s art repeatedly employs a formal language and a mode of presentation that refer to ethnological objects and collections. This enables her to comment on Modernism’s problematic appropriation strategies toward non-European art. In addition to borrowing motifs from art and cultural history, Siem critically engages the mechanisms of the male-dominated art business – a central theme in her oeuvre.

Controversial, provocative, and at the same time poignantly humorous. Andrea Fraser *1965 in Billings, Montana) is one of the most influential and pioneering artists of her generation and has been captivating her audience for more than thirty years. She employs a wide range of media, including prints, photographs, installations, and performances as well as texts and videos, time and again reformulating the same question: what we all want from art-the motivation behind Fraser's artistic production, how we view it, and how the art market distributes it.The richly illustrated catalogue allows tracing the artist for the first time from the beginning of her career. It assembles the early Four Posters (1984) as well as her famous performances, such as Museum Highlights (1989), Inaugural Speech (1997), and Official Welcome (2001/03), linking them with her most recent videos.Exhibition: Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 21.3.-5.7.2015