Conceptual artist Liang Shaoji creates unique meditations on nature and human existence. Graduating in textile studies at the Zhejiang Art Academy, Liang felt limited by the grid of warp and weft. Drawn to raw silk, he began to breed silkworms – symbols of generosity and endurance in Chinese culture – and incorporates them in artworks by setting them to spin their thread around objects. In Helmets (Nature series no. 102), a group of miners’ hats, recalling labourers killed in accidents, are covered with a fine silk web which subdues the sense of pain and fear they contain. The video Nature Series No. 25 records Liang sharing the silkworms’ experience when they spin on metal shavings: his bare feet, moving slowly and only able to carry on to the end regardless of the pain. In Candles (Nature Series no. 87), silk threads surround pieces of bamboo filled with wax and placed in a line that evokes funerals and Buddhist practices. A complex meditation on giving, Candles refers to a 9th-century Chinese poem that likens the candle’s last drop of wax to the silkworm’s last bit of thread. Here, the generosity of the wax is supported by the bamboo, which symbolises integrity, in turn surrounded by a protective silk cloud. A video entitled Cloud contemplates time through reflections, similarities and contrasts of floating clouds and soft masses of raw silk. Resisting the rampant commercialisation of modern Chinese art, Liang explores aspects of life and human qualities that influence social and cultural development. His works have been exhibited at the Venice (1999), Istanbul (1999) and Shanghai (2000, 2006) biennales.
Liang Shaoji is awarded for his evocative artworks that offer a meditative approach in which art becomes nature and nature becomes art, for his artistic integrity in working outside the mainstream, and for his insightful investigation of the ethics of the human condition and relationship with nature.
Liang Shaoji
Stills from video Nature Series No. 25
Natural Series No.10 Bed charred copper silk 800x200cm 1993 2
Liang Shaoji on Artnet
About the nature series
Biography of Liang Shaoji
Article Traces of Life
