620 Sheng Qui (1965) Sheng came to public attention in 1985 as a key member of the "New Art Movement" in China, which involved the participants painting their bodies or wrapping themselves in white cloth while running on the Great Wall, cycling, doing martial arts and other symbol-laden activities. Sheng left Beijing for Europe and in a ceremony marking his departure, he cut off the small finger of his left hand and buried it in a flower pot. Today, Sheng's works centre around issues of identity, sexuality and communication. Many of his recent photos feature the artist himself wearing a military shirt (pinned with a red ribbon), his head covered in red silk, and a bird or butterfly attached by a string to his penis which is bound in white bandages. Another common feature of his work involves asking people to shake his mutilated left hand. Shi Guorui (1964) Having graduated from Nanjing Normal University specialising in photography, Shi has exhibited in solo and group shows domestically and internationally since 2001. As a master of camera obscura, Shi typically works in large formats, with works spanning over 4 metres in length. "The Great Wall" (one is now in the collection of the Pompidou Museum, Paris) and "Shanghai waterfront" are among his two most recognised projects, each requiring 6 months of planning and execution. The work in this collection, "Himalayas Everest", forms part of this third project, which focuses on Mount Everest. Song Kun (1977) Hailed as the most promising young female artist during the 2005 Triennial of Chinese Art, Song's work examines the minutiae of daily existence. The artist portrays an inherently individual perspective, collecting on canvas the concerns, fears, desires, growth, happiness, and confusion of daily life: the fleeting, innermost feelings of her generation. The meaning of her paintings lies in both their description of the physical and the emotional; they represent, perhaps, a sugar-coated protest against contemporary life. While her paintings are less overtly political than many of her predecessors and contemporaries, she uses her own unique visual language to give expression to the concerns and desires of everyday life, building an archive of those moments of peak emotion, cognition, and memory. Song Ta (1988) Since graduating from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (BFA in Education) in 2010, Song has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world, including "Unwritten" at Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht (2014); "A Hundred Years of Shame-Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations" at Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); and "Back Home, Run Away, a sample of artistic geography" at Taikang Art Space, Beijing (2015). Song's oeuvre is rooted in his daily observations and experiences, across all forms of media, including photography, video, installation, painting and performance. Song Yuanyuan (1981) Song graduated from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, specialising in photography. Since then, he has had a number of group shows around China. Recently, Song has expanded into painting as a medium, with his first solo painting exhibition in early 2011. The subjects of these paintings are typically derived from images downloaded from the internet, rather than the artist's own photographs. Sun Xun (1980) Sun creates animations that combine hand-drawn renderings and traditional materials with new media. He studied printmaking at the China Academy of Fine Arts, but a burgeoning interest in moving images led him to found his own animation studio in 2006. To create his meticulous animations, Sun produces a multitude of drawings that incorporate text within the image. His subjects range from elements found in world history and politics, to natural organisms. He then films the drawings, sequentially one at a time, to create a sense of movement and suggest the passing of time, the machinations of history, and the beauty inherent in simple forms. Sun’s work plies the uncontested surface of politicized truth. By tying together the tenets of academic drawing with political cartoons and projecting them into the realms of installation and film, he manifests his multifaceted imagistic world as improvisational theatre. Sun Yuan & Peng Yu (1972/1974) With their sardonic humour, oblique metaphors, and fearlessly iconoclastic approach to genre, media, and subject matter, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, a Beijing-based duo, have rapidly become the most closely watched artists in Chinese art. In the late 1990s, they took the Beijing art scene by storm with their underground performances and installations, confronting conventional moral codes and values, often employing blood, human and animal cadavers, exhibiting a fully antagonistic approach the viewer's presumed moral complacency. Since then, Sun and Peng's unforgettable works could be found in the 5th Lyon Biennale in 2000, Yokohama's 2001 International Triennial of Contemporary Art, the First Guangzhou Triennial in 2001, and in the China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. T Tang Song (1960) One of the older artists in the collection, Tang graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in 1989. Tang is perhaps best known for his participation in the "gunshot incident" at the China/Avant Garde exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in 1989, which was itself a turning point in the development of Chinese contemporary art. Over the intervening years, Tang has developed a unique and independent artistic language, creating works across a range of media (painting, installation, and performance). Tsai Charwei (1980) Tsai graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (USA) in 2002 and completed her postgraduate degree at L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des BeauxArt (Paris) in 2010. Now living and working between Taipei and Paris, Tsai’s practice draws on an interest in calligraphy and her study of Buddhism, in particular the ideas of transience and impermanence that are at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. Tsai’s choice of materials reflects the location in which her work is made; the materials create direct and intimate connections with the audience, and the writing of the texts upon them is incorporated into the works as a form of performance. Over the years, Tsai has been exhibited in many leading international museums and institutions. Her works are also part of the permanent collections of Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia) and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (Sydney, Australia). Tsang Kin Wah (1976) Tsang studied at Camberwell College of Arts (London) and Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong). He has had solo shows at Yvon Lambert (New York), and more recently at Pékin Fine Arts (Beijing). He has also exhibited at the Xth Lyon Biennial, MOCA Shanghai, National Museum of Art (Oslo), KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art (Moscow), among others. Tsang Tsou Choi (1921) Ever since Tsang, self-professed "Kowloon Emperor," passed away in 2007, the corpus of works and stories he has left behind has spawned a host of reactions and a spectrum of implications within the Hong Kong community. In a postmortem surge of popularity, Tsang has been touted an icon of cultural preservation and the embodiment of the city's collective memory. In contribution to the longevity of Chinese traditional arts, Tsang Tsou Choi has wielded his ink brush all over the city. His textual graffiti has been seen on much of Hong Kong's "public furniture," the content reading of his own thoughts on the colonial government. Tsang first began covering bridges, electrical contractors, postboxes and others with his calligraphy when he was 35. In 1997, Hong Kong Arts Center and Goethe-Institut collaborated in a historical exhibition "The Street Calligraphy Of Kowloon Emperor" in hopes of instigating a re-evaluation of the artistic value behind the Kowloon Emperor's work. The earnest effort reached its pinnacle in 2003 when Tsang, the very first Hong Kong artist to have been bestowed with the honour, was invited to participate in the 50th Venice Biennale. Subsequent to his passing away in 2007, much of Tsang Tsou Choi's calligraphy has been eradicated save a single pillar at the Tsim Sha Tsui Ferry Pier. Tseng Yuching (1978) Tseng belongs to the new generation of Taiwanese artists specialising in video productions and mixed media installations. Focusing on the inner psychology of ordinary people and largely based on personal experiences, Tseng's videos explore issues such as memory, consiousness and feelings such as grief, sadness, shame and love. Tseng has had numerous exhibitions around the world and also represented Taiwan at Documenta 12 in 2007.
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