Yue Minjun is a contemporary Chinese painter, sculptor and printmaker, best known for his works depicting himself with his signature smile: uniform pink laughing faces that look like self-portraits. Through various symbols, metaphors, signs or representations of daily life, the artist constructs various realities against which the laughing figures are represented. He is often classified as part of the Chinese “cynical realism” movement, but he categorically rejects this label and insists that his art is a unique moment in history, not classifiable into any recorded style. However, he often challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting political objects and issues in a radical, abstract, ironic and cynical way.