Wu Jian’an was born in 1980 in Beijing, China. He is currently a professor and Ph.D. degree tutor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The artistic logic and visual creativity of Wu Jian'an are rooted in his use of scenes that seem distant from contemporary life to express eternal threads that run through the history of human civilization. He awakens the hidden and subtle yet grand and majestic subconscious that lies within every human heart, inspiring the viewer to reflect on human nature and the times in which we live.
In 2017, Wu represented China in the 57th Venice Biennale. In recent years, Wu’s art works have attended Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions (Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, 2023), Lines of Thought: Gestural Abstraction in the BAMPFA Collection (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, USA, 2022), SUPER FUSION: 2021 Chengdu Biennale (Tianfu Art Park, Chengdu, China, 2021), Glasstress: Window to the Future (The State Hermitage Museum, Russia, 2021), KAIWU: Art et design en Chine (Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, France, 2021), The Endless Life—the Narrative of the Yellow River (The Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, 2020), Art and Archaeology (Naples National Archaeological Museum, Italy, 2019), The 7th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan, 2018), Serpenti Form (Art Science Museum, Singapore, Singapore; Mori Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Chengdu Museum, Chengdu, China; 2017-2019), The Carolyn Hsu and René Balcer Collection: Exploring Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA, 2015), Cosmos (Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2014), etc. He had held several solo exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Xi’an, Singapore, Basel, Kalamazoo, Chicago and New York City.
His work has been collected by important institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA), the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (USA), the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archiver (USA), the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Brazil), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (USA), the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), the CAFA Art Museum (China), the Beijing Minsheng Art Museum (China), the Start Museum (China), etc. His work is also in the collection of the Modern Media Group, the HSBC Jade center, the Chen Yidan Foundation, Hermès, DIOR and BVLGARI.
Credited for the far-reaching impact of his artistic practice, Wu received “The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) 2021 Grants”, which made him the only visual artist in China to receive this award that year. In recent years, he has also received the “Influential 2023: Forbes China Contemporary Young Artists” (Forbes China), the “2020 Best of the Best Awards for Artists”(Robb Report), the “2018 40 Under 40 Awards”(Perspective), the “2017 Young Power”(Southern People Weekly), and several other cultural awards bestowed by influential medias and institutes.