Rose Tang 罗丝唐
Rose Tang was born on the beautiful hills surrounding Taichung (Taiwan) in 1967, before his wealthy family moved to Beijing in 1973. It was there they trained him vigorously to be a prominent biologist, but the stringency pushed him away from the cold practicalities of dogmatic academia and into the world of architecture where he lost himself in the bliss of balance, space, form and function. His mentor was the family’s fulltime photographer, as his parents traveled frequently and inadvertently left the two of them alone to teach and learn. When the photographer died, Rose inherited a vast collection of stills which cover a breadth of time and places over the changing tides of Chinese culture.

Rose graduated as the top student from the Philosophy College of Peking University, then worked with the stills and photographs he inherited to put viewers onto the barges of the 1920s, welcome them into birthday parties of the 1960s, and bring them to family portraits in parks taking place in springtimes spanning seven decades. In his adult life, Rose meditated obsessively and melancholically on the battle between biological membrane and external environments, until finally, on one glorious, life-giving summer’s day in a Shanghai park, he found herself.

As a woman, Rose came to Shanghai at the turn of this century as the most promising Chinese artist of a generation. Extravagant, rebellious and fearless, her work began to indiscriminately touch on all aspects of Chinese culture. In Daddy (2006) and Aunties (2006), Rose tries to understand the impact and influence that culture, relationships and family values has on the development of sexual identity. Rose Tang's works capture much of the essence and uniqueness of the identity journey by presenting a delicate balance of sociological analysis, social perception, facts, style and history.

Rose Tang works fervently in sculpture, video art, and LED animation. She continues to use her inherited stills in her work, twisting their realities using Photoshop and other morphologist software. You can find her in heirloom photographs as a smiling child and an attentive soldier, a contented businessman and a visitor in a confessional booth. In hundreds of bodies, she is present in scenes going back through the evolving customs and the longstanding traditions of China’s 20^th Century.

In March 2007, she was part of the exhibition “Remote/control” in the MOCA, Shanghai. Since 2008, Rose has had more than 25 exhibitions in Asia and Europe. Her first solo show, “Roseless”, took place in October 2010 and was inaugurated by Latvian President Valdis Zatlers. Rose Tang is one of the main pillars of the art collective Liu Dao 六岛, which displayed her contributions in Beijing, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand, and New York, and will be seen for the second year in a row at HK Art Fair in May 2011.