In 2012 Liu Xiaodong was named the “most socially aware figure of the year” by Art Gallery magazine. He had just completed his Hotan Project in the deep south of Xinjiang. Utilizing his famously “plein air” method, Liu set up his giant life-sized canvases in the middle of a Hotan river floodplain and lived with Uyghur jade pickers. He spent the summer with them in the dust and the heat; in shelters made of stones and earth. In Art Gallery’s assessment of his project he attempted to capture “the rhythms of people’s lives and the status of their survival.” This is not the first difficult project Liu has carried out. Liu is famous for them. From the Three Gorges Dam, to the Wenchuan earthquake site, to the Tibetan plateau, to inner city youth in Boston, to his most recent project “between Palestinians and Israelis,” Liu seems fascinated by difference, trauma and hardship. Perhaps this related to his position in the Chinese avant-garde art scene. If you look through Ai Weiwei’s images from his time in …