Born in Beijing, 1981, Shang Liang currently lives and works in Beijing and Shanghai. She graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 and its Experimental Art Department in 2011. In recent years, notions of masculinity, heroism, power, and conquest, among others, have constituted the motifs and major visual images in Shang’s works. Through repeated and textural brushstrokes, she creates portraits that, unlike traditional ones, are based on specific characters as symbols revolving around those themes. The figures have evolved through various series of paintings and sculptures. Shang utilize this approach to dismantle myths about the body, gender, and subculture, and explore alternative practical paths for aesthetic production and identity construction. The larger-than-life figures combine humanity, divinity, and poetry as a whole. It seems to be full of Phallus worship, but at the same time it challenges the power system it represents.

Recent solo exhibitions include: “New Man” (Cc Foundation & Art Centre, Shanghai, 2022), “Mortal at the Helm” (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2021), “New Order” (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2019). Group exhibitions include: “Spring Rhapsody” (KWM Art center, Beijing, 2022), “Mirage or Reality” (chi K11, Shanghai, 2021), “Youyi—Fish: Fengxian International Public Art Project” (Shanghai, 2021), “Shanghai Plaza” (Shanghai Plaza, 2020), “Advent: Inventing Landscape, Producing the Earth” (Qianshao Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, 2019), “Porsche Young Chinese Artist of The Year” (Beijing Exhibition Center, 2019), 2019 Airport Biennale “PLAY” (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2018), “Form Consumption Over Substance Reflection” (MadeIn Gallery , Shanghai, 2017), “Portrait Now!” (Frederiksborg Castle, Copenhagen, 2015).