Shen Wei

b. 1977

based in New York and Shanghai

Shen Wei is a Chinese-born American interdisciplinary artist, whose practice spans across photography, painting, performance, and moving image. He explores bodies, botanical forms, and constructed environments through which perception, intimacy, presence, queerness, and diasporic experience unfold. His work considers how bodies, materials, and environments produce meaning through sensory and emotional encounter.

Shen Wei holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited internationally at galleries, art fairs, institutions, such as the Museum of the City of New York, National Portrait Gallery (London), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Triennale di Milano, White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney), and Morgan Library & Museum (New York). The major public and private collections holding his work include Museum of Modern Art, Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Morgan Library & Museum, Long Museum, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

He has received fellowships and residencies from Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Bellagio, Italy), Asian Cultural Council (New York), New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York), and La Napoule Art Foundation (France), among others. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Aperture, ArtReview, Artforum, The Burlington Magazine, and Les Inrockuptibles.