QU Leilei

Chinese　1951

Qu Leilei was born in Heilongjiang, the third child to Qu Bo and Liu Bo. Being born to a well-educated family, he began exploring in the areas of literature, history, philosophy and medicine at an early age, as well as learning Chinese calligraphy and painting at the age of eight. He among the artists such as Ma Desheng, Huang Rui, Ai Weiwei and others to from the Stars Group (also known as xing xing in the 1980), yet due to political pressure many of the group members ended up leaving China. Qu left for London in 1985 and currently resides there. Qu Leilei would create a new theme for his works every five years, the theme was “Dream of the sun” from 1990-1995; “from here and now-face of the new century” from 1996-2000; “Lives of each person is epic” from 2000-2005; “Brush Ink-Light Shadow” series are created from 2005-2010; and until now, Qu Leilei never stopped exploring new themes for his creations and is continuing to grow, he’s currently working on mining workers, maternity and thousand-year empire series. Qu Lei-Lei’s works are in collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Barclays Bank The Prince of Wales, etc.