Shang Liang (b.1981, Beijing) lives and works between Beijing and Shanghai. She graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 and its Experimental Art Department in 2011. In recent years, notions of masculinity, heroism, power, and conquest, among others, have constituted the themes and major visual images in Shang’s works. Through repeated and textural brushstrokes, she creates portraits that, unlike traditional ones, are based on specific characters as symbols revolving around these themes. The figures have evolved through various series of paintings and sculptures.