She is the author of Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade, awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize for the best book on modern China from the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. She is the co-editor of Learning from Shenzhen. Her forthcoming book is The Many Names of Anonymity: Portraitists of the Canton Trade.
Her research articles have appeared in Current Anthropology, Law & Literature, Future Anterior, positions: asia critiques, and Journal of Visual Culture, and she has written essays on art for Artforum, Critical Times, M+ Museum of Visual Culture, MMK Frankfurt, Asian Art Museum SF, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Karma Books. Her work has been translated into German, Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese, and Japanese. Her research has been supported with grants from the Mellon Foundation, ACLS, SSRC, CLIR, Henry Luce Foundation, Harvard Milton Fund, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.