MALEONN

Ma Liang also known as Maleonn, is born in 1972 in Shanghai. Maleonn is one of the most talented Shanghai photographer who has gained a kind of cult following because of his fable like photographs. His images, in color and black and white, are often created with props, actors and a strange mix of hues, colors and theatrical sets. Maleonn’s protagonists are captured in quite distinct poses that they take up in settings orchestrated to the smallest detail. The symbol-laden face painting, the emotive gestures and the sumptuous costumes he uses in his works are clearly inspired by Chinese stage plays and the Beijing opera. “My father was a director at a theater in Shanghai”, he says, “and my mother was an actress. I grew up in this artificial world.” 

Biography

To say Maleonn has been an artist would be understatement as he has studied art from an early age on. “There has always been some images in my mind from the very early beginning. Many times they were quite clear. I have no idea where they came from, maybe it is the reason I studied art since my childhood, I have a prolific visual imagination.” Though raised by his grandmother, creativity can be considered as running through Maleonn’s blood as his mother was a major screen actress in China and Maleonn’s father was Shanghai’s leading opera director at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution.

From the beginning of his career Maleonn’s art has been awarded both on Chinese level as for instance in the Pingyao International Photo Festival,  and international level as at the Australian International Digital Art Awards or the Trierenberg Super Circuit in Austria. Maleonn has exhibited from Shanghai to Toronto via Singapore, San Francisco, Rome and Paris and has since then been listed in the most important 50 international contemporary visual artists by MAC Magazine in Japan.As a photographer Maleonn has been recognized early recognition in his career. His works have been shown in all Shanghai’s leading museums from the Shanghai Art Museum, the Zendai Moma, Shanghai, the Shanghai MOCA, as well as in the Liu Hai Su Museum, the MOCA in New York, the V&A Museum in London, De Voss Museum in Michigan or the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. But to say Maleonn is a talented photographer is definitely not enough. Maleonn is also a theatre scenic designer, a sculptor of scenes, a visual poet and a painter of emotions.