Wu zhengdan biography

Contemporary Chinese painter based in Beijing

Wu Zhengyan (born , Taiyuan, Shanxi Province) is a contemporary Chinese painter based in Beijing. She graduated from Shanxi University in the Department of Art in and later taught in Beijing Agriculture college. It was in that she became a professional artist. As a member of the "posts" generation of artists in China, Wu has been involved in several group shows since

Impressed by the bright colors and patterns, Wu takes the cotton print as a carrier of her language so as to express her thinking towards life through painting. In , she started to draw Coca-Cola, Statue of Liberty, Blessed Mother and Holy Son. Taking a piece of cloth with traditional Chinese Characteristics, she wanted to create a pictorial and language conflict between the two parts mentioned. So she found and installed the typical western images on the cotton print, thus leading to a contrast between the local and the foreign.

Born after the s, Wu has been influence by two different cultures from childhood. The invisible tradition could not be cast away while the western culture was brought in, leading the social development with modernism. To combine the traditional cotton print with western commercial images, she showed her embarrassment under such circumstance.

In her creations afterwards, Wu started to care for life, existence and environment of herself and her surroundings. "Snack wrappings" or computer games were painted on cotton print to show her life and what she felt. Besides, her frustration and pressure while working as a teacher in a university in Beijing was also implied in her art works. Cotton Print is used as her diary book to mark down all those little details in her daily life.

In her latest solo exhibition "Flora Journal" in Art Zone Beijing, paintings on silk as a new attempt in her creation were exhibited. Her latest paintings on cotton print, Silk scarf or canvas have built up som

Wei Baohua, 51, and Wu Zhengdan, 41, are the originators of the ballet on-shoulder acrobatic performance in China. They have performed together for 30 years.

The acrobatic play "The Butterfly Lovers," starring Wu and Wei, was performed at the China Acrobatic Festival held in Puyang City, central China's Henan Province, in early November. The ballet on-shoulder act in the play surprised the audience.

At the beginning of , Wei and Wu joined an acrobatic troupe in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province. In the troupe, their choreographer was a senior ballet dancer, who added many ballet elements to the practice.

At the end of , the troupe was on a performing tour in Copenhagen.

"After watching our performance, the head of the Royal Danish Ballet said that he liked our performance best, and our play was very consistent with the aesthetic taste of ballet. It was these comments that increased our confidence and inspired us to make a breakthrough in the combination of acrobatics and ballet," said Wei.

At the beginning of practice, they were constantly looking for the most suitable standing point for ballet performance on the body.

"The back area is large and we think it is appropriate, but the back muscles are too soft to stand on, so we put cow leather on it but failed, and we put five layers of plywood on it, and we succeeded," said Wei.

But their leader thought it was not difficult enough for acrobats. They planned to spin on the back. In the process of turning, Wu's center of gravity changed. Wei needed to stabilize her with the reaction force according to her center of gravity change. After a lot of practice, they finally succeeded.

For acrobatics, the difficulty increases with the height of the acrobats' performance.

After countless times of exploration and practice, from the end of to September , they completed the preliminary combination of acrobatics and bal