The Turner prize winner and epicenter of the YBA movement. Hirst's emblematic art of our era revolutionizes the art market. Hirst is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today, creating truly iconic artworks.

A genuine star of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, Damien Hirst has always made a point of mixing up different media. Whether as a sculptor, an installation artist, a painter, or a printmaker, Hirst has produced many of the most spectacular and widely discussed works in recent years and helped to revolutionize the art market. Damien Hirst’s, For the Love of God, the diamond-encrusted replica of the skull of a thirty-five-year-old man from the thirteenth century, broke all records to become the most expensive contemporary artwork in the world. Damien Hirst´s artworks are truly emblematic icons of our era, with their recurring motives such as dots, butterflies, cows, sharks, skulls, pills, and pharmacy cabinets. His works, captivating and intense as they are, challenge our stereotyped concepts and beliefs. Damien Hirst’s shark, suspended in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), is widely recognized, as are his real butterflies suspended in paint or thousands of butterfly wings arranged in a mandala-like pattern – the famous Damien Hirst butterfly paintings. Since 1986 he has been producing the Spot paintings (sometimes called Dot Paintings), a series of paintings with evocative pharmacological titles, which display lines of colored spots. Damien Hirst´s Spot paintings and his Spin paintings became iconic series. Inspired by such diverse themes as life, death, art, science, and medicine, Damien Hirst’s art takes a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. The energy and inventiveness are also to be found in Damien Hirst's prints, which continue to stir controversy within the viewer with the same intensity.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst, a poster boy for the Young British Artists who rose to prominence in late 1980s London, is one of the most notorious artists of his generation.

https://data.wengcontemporary.com/media/Damien_Hirst_Wu_Zetian_Content_Sheet_UPDATED_2023.pdf

“Wu Zetian” belongs to “The Empresses”, a series of five glorious prints carefully composed of butterfly wings that create a kaleidoscope effect and are placed on a flaming red background. Each work has been carefully screen printed with glitter coat which offers that gleaming effect on them. Each Empress from this series is named after five exceptionally influential female rulers: Wu Zetian (624-705), Nūr Jahān (1577-1645), Theodora (c. 490-548), Suiko (554-628) and Taytu Betul (1851-1918). Their characters and stories are enhanced by the dominant red tone of the series, which deals with themes such as life, war, power, anger, love, joy and luck.
Rife with symbolism and with a six-point star composition at its centre, Wu Zetian is named for the  ruthless yet successful Chinese ruler. In 655 CE Wu Zetian (624-705 CE) married Emperor Gaozong and became empress, much to the dismay of many statesmen who she soon eliminated in an  infamous reign of terror that she maintained over the innermost circles of government. Despite the  politics and violence within, Wu Zetian proved to be a competent leader, creating stability and  consolidating the Tang Dynasty at a time when it appeared to be crumbling.

The Empresses presented by Arianna Perini

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—Damien Hirst