Ji Wenyu (b.1959) and Zhu Weibing (b.1971) began collaborating on soft sculpture creation in 2003. They currently work and live in Shanghai.

The soft sculpture works jointly created by Ji Wenyu and his wife, Zhu Weibing, allow us to see the unique charm of another artistic language. This form of presentation seems to be “the only one” in contemporary art. The choice of cloth as a material is not accidental. It should be said that it is related to Zhu Weibing’s clothing design work.

Cloth comes from folk art, arts and crafts, various toys, and fibre arts. It is soft, warm, simple, primitive, and a bit chaotic, but the artist insists on connecting it with the present and contemporary times. A piece of cloth wrapped in cotton becomes a shape that is round or not, square or not. It follows its nature and is not arranged by others. It cannot give an accurate representation but can give frequent surprises. The artist keenly grasps the cloth’s imperfection, highlighting its unique qualities. After conception, design, production and completion, they cleverly created garden-like landscaping, stage-like furnishings, and typical “Chinese-style” puppet figures. They teasingly make fun in the way like lifting a weight as if taking it lightly, presents the ideals and illusions of modern society under the flourishing flowers. As observers of the world, this is precisely what they see.