LI WEI

Li Wei (born 1970, Hubei, China) is a contemporary artist from Beijing. His work often depicts him in apparently gravity-defying situations. Wei started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and later on took off attention with his ‘Falls’ series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

Wei has received the following awards for his work:

2005- "Macau Art museum overseas communicate the prize"-Macau art museum, 2005 2006- "31 photographers with the most creative world"-American Getty, 2006

Wei's works have been published on the cover of the following magazines: Flash Art, WORK, MAGAZIN-FrankfurterRundschau, Out of the Red, ZOOM, JULIET, CONTEMPORARY, THEARTE FORUM, NY ARTS, Fine Arts Literature, LAPIZ and Arte Al Limite.

As anyone who watched the opening ceremony of the recent Beijing Olympics will attest, China has been enjoying a burgeoning of the performing arts in recent years. One of the most striking artists to emerge from this thriving scene is Li Wei, who has become renowned for his arresting and seemingly gravity-defying photographic work.