Xu Bing
Artist of script and language.
Xu Bing made Book from the Sky with thousands of invented Chinese characters that no one can read. He questions the power of language.
Xu Bing was born in 1955 in Chongqing and grew up in Beijing, where his parents worked at Peking University. During the Cultural Revolution he was sent to the countryside as a teenager. After 1977 he studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he later also taught.
His breakthrough was Book from the Sky, Tianshu in Chinese, on which he worked from 1987 to 1991. He invented some 4,000 characters that look like Chinese but mean nothing. He carved them by hand in wood and printed books and long scrolls in traditional style. When the work is exhibited, the books and scrolls fill entire rooms. Readers who know Chinese become confused and search for meaning that is not there. The work caused great debate in China and was interpreted as a critique of the power of language and the state.
In 1990 Xu Bing moved to the United States. There he created works including Square Word Calligraphy, in which English words are written with letters shaped to resemble Chinese characters. He also made Book from the Ground, a story told entirely in symbols and icons that anyone can read. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999.
In 2008 he returned to Beijing and for some years was vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His large sculpture Phoenix consists of two birds built from scrap and tools from construction sites and is about the migrant workers who built the new China. The 2017 film Dragonfly Eyes is edited entirely from surveillance camera footage.
Xu Bing is one of the most important Chinese artists of his generation. His work explores writing, language, communication and power, and has made the tradition of Chinese script part of international contemporary art.