Miao Xiaochun was born in 1964 in Wuxi, China. He undertook an MFA at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China graduating in 1989, before embarking on a second MFA at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kassel, Germany, graduating in 1999. An influential figure in China’s wave of new media art, Miao Xiaochun is an artist primarily concerned with appropriation and East-West dialogue. For example, his photographs, assembled through a computer programme, are sprawling panoramas of China’s social masses. He exhibited in the 55th Venice Biennale China Pavilion in 2013, releasing a new series of paintings that reference his kinetic, digital works and the tableau vivant style of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.”
Recent solo exhibitions include “Miao Xiaochun,” Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China (2015); “Microcosms,” Es Baluard – Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Palma, Spain (2015); “Miao Xiaochun: The Real in the Virtual,” The Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI (2012); “Miao Xiaochun – Two Big Video Works,” Today Art Museum, Beijing (2010) and “Macromania”, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany (2010). Major group exhibitions include “Utopias and Heterotopias – The First Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition,” North Silk Factory and Western Scenic Zone, Wuzhen, China (2016); “Stories of Life – Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition,” China Cultural Centre, Sydney, Australia (2016); “China 8: Contemporary Art from China on the Rhine and Ruhr,” various locations, Dusseldorf, Germany (2015); “Screen Play: Life in an Animated World,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2015); “A New Dynasty – Created in China,” ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark (2015); “Future of Today,” Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2015); “Future Returns: Contemporary Art from China,” Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (2014); “Seeing the Unseen: Photography and Video Art in China Now,” The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL (2014); “Mediators,” The National Museum in Warsaw (2010); “Open Vision,” National Gallery, Prague (2009); “Spectacle: To Each His Own,” Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2009); “Synthetic Times – Media Art China,” National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2008); “China Design Now,” Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2008); “Expenditure, Busan Biennale,” Busan MoMA (2008); and “Made in China,” Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2007).
Currently he lives and works in Beijing and is Professor in the Department of Photography and Digital Media at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
