The term “disembedding” was originally used by Anthony Giddens, the famous British sociologist, in his book The Consequences of Modernity , to indicate "the lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefi- nite spans of time". According to Giddens, the “images” arising from this process of “disembedding” can grasp the changing patterns of time and space critical to social change and, more important, to the intrinsic nature of modernism. This “disembedding” mechanism lifts out the social relations and the information transfer from specific time-space contexts, while at the same time, it provides new opportunities for them to reenter these contexts.
Contemporary Chinese artists possessing this dynamic and creative way of thinking have been invited to take part in the “Disembedding” exhibition, which covers photographs, sound art, installations, oil paintings and videos. The exhibition reveals from a variety of angles specific issues such as the identity of contemporary art, thematic consciousness, power transfer and the value system of instrumentalism. “Disembedding” does not only represent a “dynamic” system transformation, but also a “limited area” transformation of language. Meanwhile this kind of transformation also implicates the creation of a new critical strategy and the desire to explain the “ambition to seek the truth”.