Person
Artist
Wang Youshen
王友身
Date of birth
1964
Place Of birth
Beijing, China
Biography
Wang Youshen was born in Beijing in 1964 and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988. There he studied a form of illustration that is now virtually extinct: he earned his degree from the Folk Art Department in ‘Lianhuanhua’, or ‘linked serial pictures’, illustrated graphic novels hugely popular in the twentieth century. Working as an arts editor at the Beijing Youth Daily, the official paper of China’s Communist Youth League, where he is still Art Director, Wang became fascinated by the possibility of the print medium for artistic expression, and his work has often featured newsprint and photographs, materials symbolizing the fragility of history and memory, and their vulnerability to erasure. Wang’s work has been exhibited widely within and beyond China, including in the USA, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Brazil, for example in Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2017. Wang was included in the group exhibition Mao Goes Pop at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and in ‘Aperto ‘93’ at the 45th Venice Biennale (both 1993). He lives and works in Beijing.
