Ms. Li Shurui - long now thinker and artist.

I happen to think this photo is incredibly powerful. An article in the New York Times featured a hand full of contemporary artists who are said to be quietly emerging to stardom, in Beijing. Female artists are nearly invisible in a male dominated force. Brave souls.

Photo: Natalie Behring for The New York Times

It may say something about Ms. Li's present and future thinking, though, that when asked to name a cultural role model, she pointed neither to other artists nor to contemporary politics, but to the deep past: to the seventh-century ruler Wu Zetian, who through a combination of brains, beauty, unsparing ambition and tenacious hard work, became China’s first and only female empress.