Person

Born in 1945 in Shanghai (although his ancestral home was in Guangdong Province), Liang Shaoji studied soft sculpture with one of the world's leading tapestry artists, the Bulgarian Maryn Varbanov, at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (then called the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts), graduating from its School of Tapestry in 1989. For nearly 30 years, Liang Shaoji has worked in the spaces between art and biology, installation and sculpture, new media and textiles. He pioneered the use of living silkworms to create artworks, as they enshroud objects large and small with their fine filaments; the actions of the silkworms create a language of nature. His Nature Series sees the life process of silkworms as his creation medium; interactions within the natural world as an artistic language; and time and life as the ideas that underpin his practice. He said, ‘For me, silk resembles a visible reflection of the knotting point of time and life – the imprint of being and beings.’ Liang sees this unity as a metaphor for ‘everything under heaven’ and the origin of the universe and all it contains; his work is profoundly infused with Daoist and Zen (Chan) Buddhist philosophy. Important exhibitions include The Allure of Matter, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA (2019-20); Liang Shaoji: As If, M Woods Art Museum, Beijing (2018); What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, Al Riwaq, Doha, Qatar (2016); Liang Shaoji: Cloud Above Cloud, Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2016) Art of Change, Hayward Gallery, London, U.K. (2012); The 6th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (1999); The 48th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1999). Liang Shaoji lives and works in the remote mountains of Tiantai, in Zhejiang.