The artists behind these projects, frustrated by or even indifferent to the formal art world, often operate independently of galleries and museums, produce intangible or site-specific works that are not easily displayed, and embark on long-term undertakings that sometimes challenge what can be considered art.

Elements of social practice art are not new; artists have been producing highly participatory art since the Surrealists nearly a century ago, and such work still tends to cause a splash (think Marina Abramovic’s much-talked-about “The Artist Is Present”). But in more recent years, social practice art has slowly been gaining institutional recognition in North America and Europe, where museums and art foundations have begun encouraging more community-oriented art.

In 2005, the California College of the Arts in San Francisco started offering the first fine arts program with a concentration on social practice art, and the Guggenheim recently began a new social practice initiative. Amid much uproar, the prestigious Turner Prize was awarded in 2015 to Assemble, a British collective of architects who transform neglected public spaces through community engagement.

In China, critics and artists alike say that such art taps into both past and contemporary developments.

“The sense of equality that was installed in our consciousness by socialist revolution had a huge impact on these artists. Social practice art has a socialist legacy,” said Zheng Bo, an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong whose online gallery, A Wall, documents social practice art in the greater China region. “But beginning in the 1990s, Chinese contemporary art went through an export-oriented era, addressed to a foreign audience. Now we’re going through a rebuilding of a local art language.”