“My thesis paper compares and contrasts two post-socialist Chinese art movements: the ‘85 New Wave and Fifth-Generation cinema. It discusses artworks through the lens of politics, connecting Socialism with Chinese characteristics, to Maoism, to traditional culture; it examines how the artists of this era are grasping at a new opportunity to change the trajectory of Chinese art, questioning narratives imposed on post-Mao Chinese artworks by Western societies. It argues that the main elements connecting these artworks and films are their newfound freedoms of stylistic expression and loss of political unity, bringing forth artworks that embody the ideas of globalisation, postpolitics, and transhistoricity.”