Liang Shaoji, Chinese Artist Who ‘Collaborated’ with Silkworms, Has Died at 81

Chinese artist Liang Shaoji, known for his multidisciplinary silkworm installations, died at age 81 in Shanghai following an illness, announced ShanghART Gallery, his longtime dealer.

“It is with profound sadness that ShanghART Gallery announces the passing of Liang Shaoji,” reads the gallery’s social media post. In 1989, Liang began his lifelong project known as the “Nature Series,” defined by his research and art practice involving silkworms and silk farming as a “creation medium” and “collaborative partners.”

For these works, Liang introduced silkworms to objects of varying scales—a shoe, plastic cups, shards of ceramics, but also emotionally and physically weightier items like massive iron chains, oil barrels, or broken stones and bricks from earthquake debris. With his careful direction, the silkworms slowly adopted Liang’s foreign objects as their homes, covering them with snowy white threads, creating their own sculptures.

“Through this sustained dialogue with nature, his work explored time, life, transformation, and the process of creation,” stated the gallery. Liang also used sculpture, textiles, films, performance, and sound in his installations, which could appear on a massive scale.

The resulting, living dialogue between artist and silkworm—and silkworm and object—offers a poignant metaphor for life’s constant transformation, its cycles and delicate resilience. This also speaks directly to Liang’s interest in traditional Eastern philosophies and aesthetics, which view the silkworm as a symbol of rebirth and reincarnation in Chinese culture.

“In summary, my art is complex; the soul of it is experience and meditation,” Liang said in a 2017 interview.

Liang’s celebrated 2024 solo show at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen, titled Sea of the Cloud, featured a massive iron chain on which silkworms spun their threads, set in front of a filmed ocean landscape. Speaking about how he came up with the idea for the piece, Liang said: “It was when I saw a silkworm crawling onto the roof. It crawled slowly, almost slipping off the edge, when suddenly it caught hold of a thread in the middle. It immediately spun silk around it, securing itself, then wobbled and climbed back up. In that moment, I felt life hanging by a thread, teetering on the brink—It was a profound impact. I felt a greater sense of purpose. Not just witnessing that single thread, but the suspense of life itself and the resilient will to survive.”

He later thought to use the giant metal chain as a framework for silkworms to inhabit. “The iron chain formed a loop with two ends joined together, creating a figure-eight shape reminiscent of the silkworm’s spinning,” he said. To Liang, the contrasting cold iron with the softer and warmer silk also evoked complementary forms of spiritual strength.

Some critics have questioned Liang’s use of live animals as artistic “collaborators,” and the artist has defended his approach in past interviews. “Based on observation and analysis of the life of the living creature, I find and cultivate its own potential and naturally achieve the transformation. I use biotech in a moderate way to activate genes while avoiding violent intervention,” he said in a 2017 interview.

Liang was born in Shanghai in 1945, and was forced to work in one of the country’s largest linen fabric factories after China’s Cultural Revolution barred student enrollment in his local art school. In the 1980s, after traveling abroad and seeing reflections of his budding ideas about combining mediums into “multi-dimensional art,” he went on to study at the School of Tapestry at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He specialized in “soft sculpture,” a movement co-established by his teacher, Bulgarian master tapestry artist Maryn Varbanov. For much of his life, he lived in a temple on Mount Tiantai in Zhejiang Province, and has often been referred to as the “holy hermit.”

Acclaimed both in China and abroad, Liang, who remained modest and liked to say, “I am a silkworm,” was awarded the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) in 2002, and in 2009 he received the Prince Claus Award.

Speaking about his life’s work, the artist commented: “Nature perpetually renews itself; my creation does not end.”