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TIME, LIFE AND NATURE

A CONVERSATION WITH LIANG SHAOJI

Paul Gladston
Eyeline 73
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Liang Shaoji was born in Shanghai in 1945. He was trained initially as a textile artist at the Zhejiang School of Fine Arts and in the early part of his career, during the 1980s, produced numerous innovative textile hangings and installations. In 1988 he began an open-ended series of installations and assemblages known as the Nature Series, involving the use of found objects and materials as sculptural supports upon which dense coverings of silk fibres have been deposited by live silkworms. In this interview, which was recorded at the ShanghArt Gallery in Shanghai at the time of the artist’s most recent solo exhibition there, Liang Shaoji gives an account of the cultural, historical and intellectual background to his work as well as insights into its making and possible significances.

 

Paul Gladston: Since the late 1980s, your work as an artist has been characterised by the use of found objects and assemblages upon which silkworms have been allowed to deposit dense coverings of silk fibres. Your use of silk as a sculptural medium can be understood to carry with it certain connotations of, for want of a better term, ‘Chineseness’. Could you say something about the relationship between your work and Chinese cultural identity?

Liang Shaoji: Actually, as a Chinese—as someone who lives and works in China—even though one doesn’t talk or think consciously about Chinese culture, one has already been marked by that culture. However, it’s not an easy thing to truly grasp what Chinese culture is or the deep meanings that lie behind it. More importantly, one now has to view Chinese culture from a new global perspective; one that allows us to see the advantages... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Nature No. 101 – Cloud Mirror, 2007. Photograph, 100 x 150cm. Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai.

Nature No. 101 – Cloud Mirror, 2007. Photograph, 100 x 150cm. Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai.

Chains – The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Nature Series No.79, 2003. Polyurethane colophony, iron powder, silk, dimensions variable, 13 pieces. Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai.

Chains – The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Nature Series No.79, 2003. Polyurethane colophony, iron powder, silk, dimensions variable, 13 pieces. Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai.