Introduction

Li Shan is a Chinese contemporary artist and a pioneer of BioArt. He was born in Lanxi, Heilongjiang Province in 1942. Li studied at Heilongjiang in 1963 and attended the Shanghai Theater Academy in 1964. He taught at college of Shanghai Theater Academy after graduation and retired in 2002. Now he lives in Shanghai and New York. In the 1960s, Li Shan started to engage in contemporary art. His Propagation series and the Rouge series, important works from that period, were selected for the China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, the 45th Venice Biennale, and the 22nd Sao Paulo Biennale.

Li Shan was also one of the main participants in the Chinese ‘85s New Wave Art Movement. In 1993, Li began investigations on life science through his art. Based on molecular biology, he completed the first-ever BioArt project Reading at the genetic level in 1998 and published the article The Story of Fish and Butterfly in 2002. Five years later his Pumpkin Project was finished and exhibited at ShanghART Shanghai.