Wu Shanzhuan is an artist based in Hamburg. He was born in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China in 1960. His art is Conceptual in nature, often dealing with issues surrounding language. His work includes painting, drawing, installation, photography and performance. Wu Shanzhuan graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou (now the China Academy of Art) in 1986. He moved to Europe in the late 1980s, and obtained a master's degree from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (Hochschule für bildende Künste, 1989). He lived in Germany and Iceland for over ten years, and returned to China in 2005. As one of the leaders of the Chinese Conceptual Movement in the 1980s, Wu Shanzhuan was the first Chinese artist to assimilate textual pop references into his work. Wu's pivotal installation, Red Humour International (1986), laid the foundation for his 'highly idiosyncratic and sophisticated approach to painting, which forgoes image in favour of political jingoism, religious scripture, and advertising slogans'. Known for his experimental works with language and the use of big character posters, Wu is a kind of precursor to the better known works of Gu Wenda and Xu Bing. Wu was part of the red humor group, who toyed with language and meaning. His works are filled with satire, language tricks, symbols and radical games. He has posed nude in his art works for a while with his wife, Inga Svala Thorsdottir. Inga was born in 1966 in Iceland, and graduated from the Painting Department of the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts in 1991. In 1995, she graduated from the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg. She founded Thor's Daughter's Pulverization Service in 1993, and BORG in 1999.