Celebrating a birth, narrating a project: the Chinese posters of the early 1950s

The first years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949) are considered crucial for the history of the country, and the posters of the exhibition China 1949: Images of a New Dream are a surprising testimony to that. The peculiarity of the period 1949–53 is rooted in the historical reality of the time. The two main themes of the images and slogans that we find in the posters are the celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and a sophisticated narrative on both what role the new state entity should play in the lives of its citizens and also on the main pillars of the political project. Furthermore, as artefacts of Chinese popular culture that have survived to the present day, the posters can be viewed as tangible historical testimonials of technical skills, communication strategies and aesthetic choices. They are ultimately the fruits of the artistic and technological context in which they were published.