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This article analyses the practice of Handshake 302, an art collective based in Shenzhen, as an exemplary case of the recent development of urban public art in China in which public participation has become central. Defining itself as an experimental public art project, Handshake 302 adopts an interdisciplinary, open-ended, collaborative and socially conscious approach in designing its various participatory tactics. Advocating that ‘art should belong to everyone who contributes to the city’, it has charged itself with the task of creating opportunities to enable people of disparate backgrounds ‘to participate in art activities and unleash their creativity’. In practice, it embraces a wide range of forms/ methods to engage urban residents of Shenzhen, involving them in art making, exhibitions, research, workshops, dialogues, tours and field trips, among others, with the mission of enabling ordinary people to engage with creative activities that deal with Shenzhen’s diverse urban spaces. Discussing key programmes carried out by Handshake 302, I posit that urban public art has become an expanded field for critically minded art professionals to initiate grassroots urban interventions and social innovations and the working of this art collective sheds light on this new artistic and civic movement that can be called socially engaged participatory public art.

In early 2020, Chinese people engaged in several rounds of extraordinary online campaigns in response to the government’s handling of the outbreak of coronavirus. During these campaigns, visual images played a crucial role in facilitating netizens to inform each other, escape official censoring machinery, express anger and frustration, excavate truth, document reality and mobilize online support and protest. In particular, images related with Dr Li Wenliang, one of whistle-blowers of the soon-to-be pandemic who himself died of the virus, and Dr Ai Fen, the first doctor to share information about a possible coronavirus diagnose among her colleagues, became the focal points of the unprecedented online mobilization successively. Millions of netizens participated in the effort to circulate these images (and stories behind them) and invented ingenious ways to continue the endeavour when confronted by the heightened censorship. Various art communities and individuals have done their share to fuel in this momentum of visual mobilization and there was a surge of call for public participation in responding to the pandemic through participatory public artworks. Maskbook, initiated by artist Wen Fang, and One More Day led by MeDoc, are two exemplary cases. Through analysing these images, this article discusses China’s grassroots visual mobilization to claim for freedom of speech and access to truth in the wake of the massive health crisis and articulates its contribution to the formation of a bottom-up visual discourse that challenges the state’s media discourse in interpreting the pandemic as a victory of government leadership.