An annual event

Artist Liang Shaoji buries various cell phones with shimmering and sparkling white silk threads in his installation Stranded from his Snow Cover series.

"Mobile phones become indispensable to us. It seems that only via mobile phones can we gain a sense of existence and maintain communication with the outside world. However, a large amount of fake information keeps us unsettled," says the 78-year-old, who raises silkworms and has used silk threads throughout his artistic career.

Liang wishes that people would spend more time in the real world, instead of being immersed in cyberspace and dominated by things like mobile phones, tablets and computers.

A total of 111 representative artists were included in the name list of the Annual. They were selected through extensive surveys, research of 3,850 documentary sources, and analysis of related data. Almost all of them held shows at art museums in 2021.