Shen Jingdong

For many contemporary Chinese artists, the iconography of their nation has been the main source of inspiration.

Shen Jingdong also uses these communists icons in his paintings and sculptures, but he does this a particular way. He paints the soldiers and the world that he got to know during the sixteen years he spent in the army.

Shen Jingdong presents his soldiers in the most brilliant light in the "Eight Route Army", having in mind the iconic images of Mao Zedong, the Japanese comics, the terracotta warriors and the children soldiers.

For him, they are not mere killing machines, but rather consumer objects, toys coming straight out of a hypermarket or an assembly line.

After 16 years of service in the Chinese army, Shen Jingdong has been working in his Beijing studio for a decade now.