Liu Yiwei

Liu Yiwei was born in Beijing of China in September 1977. The first signs of his interest in painting, music, poetry and performance became apparent in his childhood and he was a keen student of painting from an early age. In 1993, when western modern art and rock music culture came to China via Hong Kong and Taiwan, he discovered a new passion and taught himself music and organised a rock band with other Chinese musicians. However, his pursuits were not totally dominated by his passion for western art forms and Liu Yi Wei was also highly influenced by eastern traditional culture, art and philosophy, such as Zen and Daoism.

In 2002, Liu Yi Wei studied photography in Beijing film academy where he developed a large portfolio of portrait and landscape pictures, culminating in a showing of his work at the Guangdong Art Museum in 2004. In the same year, he traveled to Italy and presented his first series of black and white work called “Landscape of time”. In 2005, he held his solo exhibition in a number of locations including; Beijing Italian culture center, Guangzhou University library, Pingyao and the international photo festival of Rome. At the same time he also conducted some reportage work about China for a number of European magazines, such as “Colors magazine”, and “Corriere Della Sera”.

From 2006 to present, Liu Yi Wei has been working at the “Modern Media publishing and advertising group”. While at this company, he has found great satisfaction in his portrait work and was glad to have had the opportunity to photograph Chinese and international artists, directors and musicians, such as Sonic Youth, Deine Lakaine, Cui Jian, and Zhao Bandi. In his portrait work Liu Yi Wei uses a steady, calm photographic style while suggesting a sense of drama, and his work is well known for giving his models the feeling of being frozen in time, like a statue in the showcase of forever, with the strong stage spotlight and darkened background. While Liu Yi Wei has a great passion for music, he also has a keen eye for more commercial work and he has provided work for well known international magazines, including Vogue, Figaro, FHM, Man’s Health, Trend’s Traveller and Food Report. And like many other photographers, looking to push their techniques and talents to the highest point, Liu Yi Wei has enjoyed the opportunities his job has brought him in the advertising field, working with clients such as Volkswagen, Audi, Motorola, Lenovo, HP, Financial street plaza and Chow Sang Sang Jewellery.


Liu Yi Wei represents the generation born in the late 1970s that has experienced the great leaps of Chinese society and are able to blend traditional traditions of Chinese art and culture with western ideas, which they were first exposed to in the 1980s. He has a sense of eastern introspection combined with a modern outlook based on his experiences of a modernising China and exposure to western culture, which he is able to combine into a rounded life philosophy which respects the beauty of different cultures. Liu Yi Wei is now well placed to take his work to a new level, where he can divide his time between working abroad and working within China.