Born in Beijing in 1957, Li Shuang grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China. Ten years of stringency, thought control and forced revolutionary fervor affected her painting. Li's status as a rebellious artist and her request for permission to marry a foreigner, a French diplomat and visiting professor of Chinese history, led to the artist's arrest in 1981. After serving a two-year sentence for re-education in a prison outside of Beijing, Li rejoined her fiancé in Paris.

While Li Shuang's work does not suggest anger or political suppression, her subjects, often women, do present a sense of strength, stillness and calm, balance and serenity; a quiet complexity. Li incorporates traditional objects such as ...