Introducing Li Shuang

Li Shuang, born 1957 in Beijing, is a contemporary Chinese artist.Her works testify to her painful personal and artistic journey. She grew up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution within a family of intellectuals. Her early childhood artistic development was influenced by her grandfather, a dealer in Chinese antiques, books, and art.During the Chinese political reformation and opening up in the late ninetieth, “Li Shuang” was a household name in the art industry in France and other European countries. On a superficial level, the romantic story between Li and her husband might account for the reopening of art in isolated China due to Cultural Revolution. More specifically, Western media described “Li Shuang Incident” as the precursor and advocator of the emerging Chinese modern behavior art.Both of her parents graduated from Beijing University. During her childhood, she was majorly influenced by her grandfather, an antiques, books, and artworks trader who traveled between Asian and Western countries. However, after the Cultural Revolution took place in Beijing, her family was deteriorated by the Red Army. She recalled, "It was a cold winter at my age of 13, I was sitting on a square chair in the house, staring at my father’s working desk. He has been imprisoned and interrogated by the local academy for 3 months because of his storage of foreign literature and art work. All the possessions were confiscated and the house filled with emptiness and solitary. I wanted to draw the table on a paper, as if my father was using it to read and write. Since then, I picked up the brush and stepped on the path of drawing, even until now.”After Li Shuang graduated from high school in 1976, she and her schoolmates were deported to the rural area of Beijing and started farming for the next three years. During her spare time, Li kept practicing drawing and studying art for her ambition to attend professional art school. However, due to her special family background (Father was charged), Li's dream did not come true in the end. Fortunately, she was discovered later by some of her artworks and accepted into China National Youth Theater as a stage designer. Then she became well known for her contributions to the academy.

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Image source : www.chinesenewart.com