The documentary is important for the sake of history, Ms. Kan, 45, said. But she long ago moved on.

Her more recent video work focuses on the tombs of Chinese emperors and their courtiers. She has traveled to the far reaches of China, often trekking up mountains to capture the emperors’ remains. “When I was traveling I told myself: ‘See what you see and feel what you feel.’ I have used simple techniques.”

Ms. Kan was one of four female artists for the 2007 Venice Biennale but she doesn’t care, she said, about gender politics. What’s more important, she pointed out, was to remain independent of the commercial galleries. Unable to survive on her creative videos, she has often taken jobs in high-end commercial film production, including filming luxury sports cars on treks from Beijing to northern Italy.

Even though her themes dwell on China, she considers herself an international artist and lives between Beijing and Amsterdam. “I only choose to be in shows where the curators and the artists work hard,” she said, “whether it’s Chinese artists or not.”

Qiu Zhijie

A vast multipaneled ink on paper map by Qiu Zhijie, one of the pioneers of China’s contemporary art world, is the only new work in the exhibition.

Over the years, Mr. Qiu has drawn outsized maps that combine fantasy with politics. The Guggenheim commissioned a map that juxtaposed Chinese and global events with the unfolding contemporary art scene in Beijing and Shanghai.

A master calligrapher, Mr. Qiu, 48, learned the discipline of painting characters as a child. His spidery writings, in English and Chinese characters, scrawl across the map that traces the torturous path from Mao to Xi Jinping. Some may see the work’s style as resembling Saul Steinberg’s maps for The New Yorker.