“I want to challenge the extremes in both work and life.”

Born: Anxi, Fujian, 1969. Lives and works in Beijing

Chen Wenling says he was a playful child, “always monkeying around”. His parents were so poor that he had to make his own toys—of which his sculptures are, in a sense, grown-up versions. He shot to artistic fame with his Red Memory series (2001-07): more than 100 outsized figures of naked boys at play, all covered in shiny red car duco. While the red boys (a colloquial expression for newborn sons) were bursting with innocent fun, Chen Wenling’s focus has since shifted to adults and their vices. Many of his more recent works involve pigs, which he finds a perfect metaphor for Chinese people today. In Chinese tradition, he says, pigs are seen as “gluttonous, lazy, dirty, horny and stupid as well as content and happy, while science has shown that pigs are very clever. In my eyes, the pig also symbolises speed … and enormous productivity.” Chen Wenling depicts pigs as human and humans as pigs, interdependent almost to the point of fusion. In Happy Life—Family (2005), a mother stands on a pig’s back holding her baby; in Valiant Struggle No. 11 (2006), a couple cling desperately to a giant golden sow of success.