China’s Cultural Diplomacy at the Venice Biennale. Is it working?

The Chinese desire of establishing an effective national cultural soft power affected even the diffusion of Chinese contemporary art in prestigious international art events. Specifically, the Venice Biennale has been used over the years as a Cultural Diplomacy platform suitable at displaying an “offical” contemporary image of China to the world. This master thesis examines the effectivity of such Chinese Cultural Diplomacy policies in the context of the Venice Biennale. This, by longitudinally controlling the evolution of both the average auction prices and the career of the artists who exhibited at the People’s Republic of China pavilion of the Venice Biennale from 2003 to 2015. I argue that Chinese Cultural Diplomacy at the Venice Biennale can be considered as been successful in Europe, in the minor art markets of Latin America, Oceania, and West Asia, and also domestically, in the same China. By contributing on the literature on China’s Cultural diplomacy at the Venice Biennale, the research stresses the relevancy of the China as a “soft-power superpower” and as a prime actor in the contemporary art world.