Life and Dreams is the first extensive catalog of works by Chinese artists represented in the Walther Collection. Showing artworks by 44 groundbreaking artists, it demonstrates the remarkable speed with which photography and media art have occupied important positions within experimental Chinese art since the early 1990s, and the widespread adoption of these mediums and forms by successive generations of artists.

Key approaches taken up by these artists include the use of the bare body as raw material for creative manipulation; the surveying of the built environment; the synthesizing of classical and historical imagery to comment on contemporary issues: the consideration of China's political legacies; and the shaping of emergent forms of individual and collective identity.