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Communicating across cultures

Internationally acclaimed artist examines the relation of language to experience

By Katie Hudson (’10)

Xu Bing

Xu Bing's work was on exhibit in Duke Hall’s Sawhill Gallery in February 2008

On Feb. 14, the renowned artist Xu Bing spoke to JMU students and faculty members about his art works and award-winning 30-year career. Bing creates installations that reference the idea of communication and meaning through language. A selection of his work was on exhibit in Duke Hall’s Sawhill Gallery from Jan. 21 to Feb. 26.

Bing, born in 1955, grew up in Beijing and was relocated to the countryside for two years during the Cultural Revolution. In 1977 he enrolled in the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, where he studied printmaking. He earned an M.F.A. from the Central Academy in 1987, and in 1990 he moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lives and works.

Bing began his career in printmaking creating some of the first Chinese installation art, including what is perhaps his best-known work, Book from the Sky.

Award-winning art

Bing’s art has been exhibited worldwide, and he has won countless awards during the past 25 years. He has presented solo exhibits in renowned international galleries in 15 of the last 20 years. Recently, Bing was granted the Southern Graphics Council Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors originality in printmaking.

“From the mid-1990s to the present, Xu has become the exemplar of the highly successful transnational artist,” says David Ehrenpreis, art history professor and director of the Institute for Visual Studies at JMU.

During his campus visit Bing talked to students in classrooms and critiqued M.F.A. students’ works. The JMU community viewed more than 50 images of his work on a large projection screen during his lecture.

Examining the aftermath of Sept. 11

In one of his standout works, Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?, Bing used dust collected from the streets of lower-Manhattan in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, in an attempt to understand the gravity and implications of the event. In the work, Bing references the fine whitish-grey film that covered downtown New York in the weeks following Sept. 11, and he recreates a field of dust across the gallery floor that is punctuated by the outline of a Zen Buddhist poem. The piece reads, “As there is nothing from the first/Where does the dust collect itself?” The work won the inaugural Artes Mundi Prize and the Wales International Visual Art Prize in 2004.

The MacArthur Foundation bestowed a genius grant award to Bing in July 1999 for “originality, creativity, self-direction and capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.”

Exploring the tensions between language and culture

Bing’s work is well known for examining the relationship between image and text and the tensions between language and culture. The artist solidified this notion in several works that appear to depict Chinese writing, yet when closely examined are English words in the shape of Chinese calligraphy. During his visit, Bing explained that many Chinese claim he is turning the Chinese written language into English, but Bing says, “I tell them that I am turning the English language into Chinese.”

Bing just completed his newest works, which include the use of icons and software to create art. According to the artist’s Web site, the work is a new experimental project that deals with the natural formation of a global language.

Learn more about internationally acclaimed artist Xu Bing, at www.xubing.com.