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Shen Shaomin (沈少民, born 1956, Heilongjiang Province, China) is an artist based in Sydney, Australia, and Beijing.

He has exhibited internationally in exhibitions including the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, Mahjong at Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland and Dialogue at East West Gallery  in Melbourne.

Shen Shaomin's art is designed to make people think about the world around them, and the impact that they have on the world, both as individuals and as members of the human race. His works include skeletons of mythical creatures, experimental fields (also constructed out of bones and bonemeal), bonsais, the Summit installation, Fighter X, and Kowtow Pump.

Childhood/Early Years
Shen studied art history for three years at Harbin College of Education. His artistic career began with print-making in 1979. He later switched to making soft sculptures out of defective fabric prints from a textile printing and dying factory. He visited Australia in 1989 for an international print conference; he returned a month later for an exhibition, and then returned again in 1990. Shen returned to China while working on his skeletal creatures because of the many animal protection laws in Australia preventing him from acquiring bones.

Bonsai Series
Shen began his bonsai series in 2007. He created these bonsais by using wires, pulleys, cages, and various other tools to make them appear tortured. He did this as a commentary on the brutality with which humans control their environment. It was also a commentary on how humans control each other, as a boss controls an employee, and a parent or school controls a child. As Michael Young points out, the wires and pulleys on Shen’s plants are “both implements of torture and the props on which the organism depends to survive.” Shen was inspired to create these bonsais while looking for books about Chinese foot binding. During his research, he happened upon a manual detailing the process of bonsai-making, and recognized its similarities to foot binding: they both drag and twist limbs to make them serve human interests. In an interview, Shen said, “I think the process of bonsai -making is basically the abuse of plants. You grow a sapling, then twist it to make it grow into artificial shapes. Despite the whole deforming process being extremely cruel, people find the bonsai beautiful.” According to Shen, each tree took at least ten years to grow. He enlisted the help of many people from the Anhui province, as bonsai growing is a very common practice in that region.

Project No. 1: Tiananmen Reconstruction
Shen’s Tiananmen Reconstruction Project, titled “Project No. 1”, is a wooden model of the Tiananmen gate, except re-designed such that it is twice as large as Tiananmen as it now stands. It is “accompanied by precise and detailed blueprints, construction progress photos, stills and an animated film of the interior”. It was doubled in size to highlight the Chinese tendency to create oversized, extravagant buildings that stand in stark contrast to the poverty of the population as a whole. Many of the buildings currently surrounding Tiananmen are larger or more extravagant than Tiananmen itself, despite their lesser importance. Thus, Shen created this model to show how much larger and more extravagant Tiananmen would need to become to maintain its appearance in relation to these other buildings. Shen’s version includes underground passageways, soldiers, and tanks. In addition, one room is set aside for soldiers to receive massages from young women wearing cute outfits. Shen says that “[o]nly a Tiananmen of this scale could match the scale of China’s modern urban development”.