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.

The uncommonly rich paintings and watercolors of Berlin-based Uwe Kowski (born in 1963 in Leipzig) walk a fine line between abstraction and representation. They are delicate, complex compositions whose layers of paint can hide written words or any of many art-historical references, from the Impressionists to Jasper Johns.