Wu Wen

Born in Qingdao, China in 1978. She graduated in 2001 with a Fine Art degree from Qinghua University, Beijing. She then moved to London and achieved a MA in Fine Art in 2005 at the London Metropolitan University.

Wen describes herself as an insistent aesthete and aim to show her internal beauty of cultural icons with a mixture of classical Chinese and global culture. She is influenced by classical Hollywood films and glamour stars such as Vivian Leigh and the works of Pier Paolo Passolini and Valazquez. Her recent work consists of two series of paintings and exemplifies a variation of techniques she utilises to probe issues relating to beauty. The series ‘Quirky Beauty’ uses images from the birth of photography as source material and focuses on the slightly surreal and quirky nature of the adorned human form. The second series ‘Shanghai Ladies’ is her investigation into the character of a ‘beauty’ and allows her to interpret photographic studies of these ladies based on her own feelings of the nature of beauty.