Person
Artist
Shen Shaomin
沈少民
Date of birth
1956
Place Of birth
Acheng City, Heilongjiang, China
Biography
Shen Shaomin was born in 1956 in Heilongjiang Province, China and initially was acclaimed for his woodblock prints, a technique he had learned outside the formal art academy system. During the 1980s he went to Beijing and became part of the experimental avant-garde. In 1989 he became part of an artistic diaspora he left China and dispersed across the globe: Shen came to Australia where he lived and worked until returning to China in 2001, motivated by the excitement of a growing contemporary art scene and by the availability of materials and labour for his transgressive and ambitious multimedia works. He created a series of still and kinetic sculptures using bonemeal and animal bones sourced from slaughterhouses that question advances in science, biotechnology and genetic engineering. In 2012, aiming to further develop the cultural relationship between China and Australia he established a residency program in his studio complex outside Beijing, in conjunction with Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Shen Shaomin works across media and forms, from sculpture to painting, from video and installation to performance art. He intends to conclude his ‘bone’ series with an installation made with his own bones after his death.
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