Jiang Shuo

Jiang Shuo was born in 1958 in Beijing, China. She studied sculpture at the now Academy of Fine Arts between 1978 and 1982, and subsequently became the first sculptress in China to complete a post-graduate degree. After winning a scholarship to a university in Austria in 1989, she immigrated with her sculptor husband, Wu Shaoxiang and their son. They settled in Klagenfurt, Carinthia where they established a joint studio. Since then Jiang has widely exhibited her sculptures around the world, including Austria, Indonesia, Singapore, and Switzerland. Her works are also regularly sold through galleries, and at auctions in Beijing, Hong Kong, and New York. Many of her works are included in major private and museum collections as well.

Jiang became famous with her iconic "Red Guard" series begun in 2003. These anonymous, open mouthed warriors who wear the Red Guard uniform, are cast in the ancient lost wax technique. They carry either a red flag or The Little Red Book, and reflect both her personal experience as a young Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, and her observations from abroad of China's emergence into a capitalistic machine.