Jiang Shuo is a Chinese-born international sculptor who works between her studios in Beijing, China; Berlin, Germany; and Klagenfurt, Austria. Her early bronzes had a folk-like quality hinting at blissful childhood memories and strong family values. In later life she turned to more serious topics, such as commercialization and the Cultural Revolution, depicted most notably in her series Red Guards.
Read MoreJiang Shuo was among the first women to study sculpture at the Central Academy of Arts & Design (now the Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University), Beijing. She subsequently pursued postgraduate studies under Professor Zheng Ke at the Central Academy of Arts & Design, Beijing, where she was appointed as a lecturer in 1986. After winning a scholarship to a university in Austria in 1989, she emmigrated with her sculptor husband, Wu Shaoxiang to Klagenfurt, where they established a joint studio and joined the Austrian Artist Association.
Since gaining Austrian citizenship in 2003, Jiang returned to China where she witnessed how dramatically Chinese cultural norms had changed since her days as a young member of the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution. In a series of this same title, anonymous open-mouthed soldiers participate in various and often humorous modern-day activities such as karaoke and eating fast food, probing the viewer to consider materialism, the rise of the bourgeois, and the growth of the capitalistic machine within the context of Chinese history.
Jiang has widely exhibited her sculptures around the world, including Austria, Indonesia, Singapore, and Switzerland, and her works are included in several major private and museum collections.
Text courtesy Alisan Fine Arts.
