# Li Shuang (artist)

Li Shuang (李爽, born 1957 in Beijing) is a contemporary Chinese artist.
Li Shuang's 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.

## Life

Li Shuang was born in Beijing in 1957. 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, "During a cold winter when I was 13, I was sitting on a square chair in the house, staring at my father’s work desk. He had been arrested three months ago by the local academy, and was still being interrogated because of his collection of foreign literature and art. All our possessions had been confiscated and the house was filled with emptiness and solitude. I wanted to draw the table my father had used to read and write. I picked up the brush and began drawing, and have continued to this day.”
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.

### The Stars

In 1979, together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping (王克平), Huang Rui, Qu Leilei, Ah Cheng, and Ai Weiwei, Li Shuang was member of the Stars Art Group (星星 - Xīngxīng), a group of untrained, experimental artists who challenged the strict tenets of Chinese politics. As a political and artistic group, they staged exhibitions around Beijing, making way for avant-garde art in China. Li Shuang was the only female artist founder of the Stars. Li exhibited in both the historic shows of 1979 and 1980. Her works were featured in all the Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong-Hong and Taipei), Demand for Artistic Freedom, The Stars 20 Years, 2000 (Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo), and the retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing). According to The New York Times, she was described as the most intellectual female artist in the era of post-Cultural Revolution in China.

### Arrest

Because of her radical movement in art and politics, and her relationship with a French diplomat, Emmanuel Bellefroid, Li was arrested by the government and received a two-year sentence. This led to a political tension between China and France at the time. Later an agreement was made between the two countries and Li was released. This incident abolished the banned interracial marriage in China.

### Exile

In 1984, Li decided to leave China and reside in Paris to pursue her study of art. She began to understand and analyze the western aesthetic tradition but remained true to her Chinese artistic roots. She has taken part in many group exhibitions, including a tenth-year reunion of the Stars Group in Hong Kong in 1989, another Stars exhibition in Tokyo in 2000, and a retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007. She has also exhibited at many shows in her own right in galleries worldwide, including Paris, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, and her works have been sold at auction by Sotheby's and Christie's. In March 2010, Dialogue Space in Beijing opened Li Shuang's solo exhibition “Butterfly Dream”, presenting spiritual works inspired by Zhuangzi's Taoist classic.

## Art

Li Shuang believes Chinese art is a spiritual movement of the heart - Chinese paintings come from the heart, while Western paintings concentrate on the scene.
In the 70's Li Shuang's art work mainly focused on village view painting, including street, mountain and houses, using ink pan and pastel. In the 80's and 90's, Li's art shifted her idea to a very wild range, such as portrait, furniture, animal, plant and so on. Each painting would have a center color and other accessory colors which was able to convey the different mood and thoughts of the artist.
As the French critic Michel Nuridsany wrote: "While the Chinese art world is going through a phase of unrestrained modernity, Li Shuang’s oeuvre is striking for its lack both of contemporary references and of all sense of febrile haste and by its intensity. This is because her art developed separately from the Chinese context, which encouraged a style of painting which reached its apogee in 1999-2000 – a style which in no way reflected her own experiences. Her strongest advantage has been her silence. Her aura. But first and foremost, her admirable sense of light."

## Exhibitions

Li Shuang began showing her work in China as early as 1979 at the Stars exhibit at the Huafangzhai Gallery in Beijing. Her paintings have appeared in various exhibitions worldwide, including San Francisco, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing.
1984 J&J Donguy Gallery, Paris, France
1985 James Mayor Gallery, Paris, France
1986 Pontius Gallery, Mountain View, CA. Ingrid's Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1987 Clarisses's Gallery, Charolles, France
1989 Art & Communication Gallery, Paris, France
1990 Municipal Museum, Vervins, France
1991 Saint Aignan, Ex_prevote, France
1995 Bellefroid Gallery, Paris, France
2000 Leda Fletcher Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2002 Leda Fletcher Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2003 De Arte Gallery, Nantes, France
2004 Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong. Cathy Gallery, Paris, France. Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France.
2005 Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France. DeArte Gallery, Nantes, France
2006 Linda Museum, Beijing, China. Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France
2007 Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France. Linda Gallery, Singapore. Cathy Gallery, Paris, France
2008 “Return of Light” Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2009 Li Shuang's collages Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France
2010 “The Butterfly Dream” Dialogue Space, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

## Auctions

1996 China Guardian, Beijing, October 1996, 22,000 CNY, oil and college on canvas
2002 Cornette De Saint Cyr, Paris Drouot, February 27, 2002, 3,500 €, oil on canvas
2003 China Guardian, Beijing, November 25, 2003, 41,800 CNY, oil on canvas
2005 Sotheby's, Hong Kong, October 24, 2005, 276,000 HKS, oil on canvas
2006 China Guardian, Beijing, November 22, 2006, 285,000 CNY, oil on canvas
2007 Bukowski's, Stockholm, April 27, 2007, 16,900 €, oil on canvas
2007 Artcurial, 20th Century Chinese Art, Paris, June 5, 2007, 1080 €
2007 Artcurial, Paris, June 5, 2007, 16,100 €, oil on canvas
2007 Sotheby's, New York, March 25, 2007, US$17,000, oil on canvas
2008 Zhongcheng, Taiwan, June 8, 2008, US$31,700, oil on canvas
2008 Sotheby's, New York, March 17, 2008, US$12,500, oil and paper
2009 Xileng, Hangzhou, China, January 3, 2009, 168,000 CNY, oil and canvas
2009 Ravenel, Taiwan, June 7, 2009, US$19,800, oil and canvas
2010 China Guardian, May 15, 2010, 134.400 CNY, oil on canvas