Born in 1977 and raised in Shanghai, Shen Wei is a Chinese-American artist based in New York City. He is known for his intimate self-portraiture and contemplative images of people and nature, highlighting the understated beauty of his surroundings. Wei’s self-portraits, nudes and sensuous landscape photographs explore notions of identity, memory and sexuality. He also works in painting, sculpture, and video. His overtly sexual photographs push against the boundaries of Wei’s conservative Chinese upbringing, which occurred at a time when even art students did not get to study the nude body and would learn to draw the body from sculptural busts. Shen moved to the United States in 2000 to study art and photography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design before heading to New York City four years later. Wei has said that his influences include Vermeer, Donald Judd and Diane Arbus. He currently lives and works in New York, America.

The White Rabbit Collection is one of the world’s most extensive and significant collections of contemporary art from China. With a focus on works created since the year 2000, the Collection contains almost 3,000 works by over 750 artists and continues to expand. Note that when you click on the link below you will be forwarded to the White Rabbit Collection website.

Explore the work of SHEN WEI in the collection database