Person
Artist
Li Qiang
李枪
Date of birth
1966
Place Of birth
Donghai, Jiangsu, China
Biography
Born in 1966 in Jiangsu province, in a small town outside Nanjing, Li Qiang graduated in 1993 from the Jiangsu Institute of Education (now the Jiangsu Second Normal University), and he now lives and works in Beijing. His practice has been described as ‘dematerialisation’ – he cuts, rips and tears the pages of magazines and mainstream pop culture and official print media and then reassembles them into portraits and landscapes. Liang chose his given name of ‘Qiang’ – its character, 枪, means ‘gun’ or ‘rifle’. He says, ‘For me the name ‘gun’ signifies the idea of revolution - it is my mission as an artist. I think today, in this era, an artist must be a revolutionary and a warrior.’ In his work, tearing up books and magazines represents a rebellion against the deluge of information – and disinformation – to which we are all constantly subjected. He sees the process of ripping the paper as akin to a Buddhist practice of tearing away obstacles to thought. Li’s work has been shown widely in group and solo exhibitions, including a solo exhibition in New York in 2016. Museum exhibitions include “Voice of the Unseen – Chinese Independent Art 1979 –Today,” a Collateral Event of Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2013); “’Le Deluge, après Mao’ China’s Surging Creative Tide,” University of Tennessee Cress Gallery of Art, Chattanooga, TN (2010); and “Morbid: Our Arts Today,” Nanjing Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2005).
