Li Shan, Life as an Open Work

What if life were a text waiting to be rewritten? That quiet question runs through the work of Li Shan, a key figure in contemporary Chinese art and widely regarded as a pioneer of BioArt. At ShanghART Gallery in Beijing, a major solo exhibition brings together important works created since the late 1990s, offering a rare glimpse into a practice that weaves together art, science, and the philosophy of life. Since the 1990s, Li Shan has pushed his artistic practice into radical territory, using the language of art to probe the logic of biology itself. In his works, genetics becomes a visual metaphor. Human bodies, animals, and insects merge into hybrid figures, suggesting a universe where the boundaries between species dissolve and life appears as a process in constant transformation. In the monumental ten-meter-long series Reading, the artist reimagines the logic of genetic manipulation through the format of a visual card game: symbols, animals, and bodies intertwine in a fluid composition where mutation feels almost playful, suspended between chance and destiny. With Unfolding, the inquiry grows even more conceptual. Here Li Shan imagines “unfolding” the DNA double helix as if it were a page to be read and edited, transforming biological information into an open language. Moving between scientific intuition and poetic imagination, the exhibition proposes a radical idea: life is not a fixed structure, but a system in perpetual rewriting.