Xu Bing

executed in 2003

Private Asian Collection

There are total nine works in Bird Language series, each of them are different

China, Hong Kong, Contemporary by Angela Li, Twinkle Twinkle Red Star - Gallery First Anniversary Group Exhibition, 3 April - 20 May, 2009

Nine Lives – The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, Karen Smith ed., Scalo, Zurich, Switzerland, 2005, p. 355

These works are generally in good condition. There appears to be wear and handling marks throughout.
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Universal Calling
Xu Bing

It is perhaps incredibly telling that about his work, artist Xu Bing had simply to say, “I worked for many years to create something that said nothing.”¹  Indeed, Xu Bing’s alluring and well-known Square Word Calligraphy—a language which renders English (or Latinate) words in a seemingly Chinese character system—looks as though it were to “say nothing”. Far from the truth however, it is a complex system that seeks to destabilise the very way language is perceived and subsequently interpreted, and serves as a way of investigating tradition and culture upon close dissection. From his early woodblock prints of the eighties, which depict scenes of life in the communes; to works from the late nineties such as Landscripts from the Himalayan Journal, which replaces pictorial representations of objects with Chinese characters; to his seminal work Book in the Sky, Xu’s oeuvre has been one that constantly seeks to unravel the “dilemma of tradition”,² to present an unexplored corner of culture in a way that subverts all expectations. It is thus no wonder that Xu has been the centre of an incredible amount of scholarly essays and large-scale exhibitions, with works shown at the British Museum in London, the Venice Biennale, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and most recently, a major solo-exhibition in Hong Kong’s Asia Society, entitled “It Begins with Metamorphosis: Xu Bing”. The present work on offer, Bird Language (Lot 856) is a fascinating look into the mind of Xu Bing, and is a strong representation of the artist’s Square Word Calligraphy, as well as his knowledge of and enquiry into folklore, rendered in three-dimensional format.

Xu Bing was born in 1955, in Chongqing and was later raised in Beijing. As the son of academics in a China that was deep in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, Xu witnessed the arrests of his parents; his father, the Head of the History Department at the University of Beijing, and his mother, the Office Manager of the Department of Library Science. All of Xu’s family, including Xu himself, were forced to undergo “re-education”, a national effort to promote literacy among the populace through the introduction of a new simplified Chinese text. Having learned calligraphy from his father as a child, Xu Bing’s “re-education” ran deeper, marked by the “unlearning” of traditional Chinese characters and relearning the new simplified forms. It is thus no doubt that the artist’s continual inquiries into language find their roots in this period of his life. Being re-educated had a profound impact on the artist, for which he had to say, “This remoulding of my earliest memories—the promulgation of new character after new character, the abandonment of old characters I had already mastered, the transformation of new characters and their eventual demise, the revival of old characters—shadowed my earliest education and left me confused about the fundamental conception of culture.”³

Bird Language is an important culmination of this interest in language. Comprising of three bird cages whose walls are covered in Square Word Calligraphy text, and fitted with sound-activated birds, the present piece is an exploration of folklore and traditional culture. Over a one year period beginning in 2002, Xu created nine of such cages, three of which are part of the present lot. Xu’s Square Word Calligraphy and New English Calligraphy—undoubtedly two of his most instantly recognisable trademarks—have garnered the attention of countless curators and academics alike, as well as captured the public’s eye since the early nineties. Inspired by his struggles with learning English after his move to the United States in the late eighties, these two scripts combine the essence of the Chinese language with English characters, and can be read as English. What is interesting about Bird Language, is that the cage is imbued with the artist’s philosophy, as well as covered with excerpts from an interview that the artist participated in.

According to Xu, “In many cultures the language of birds is symbolic of a multi-levelled, almost bizarre language. [As such], this work [Bird Language] is humorous and self-mocking.”⁴ Considering that some of the “translations” into Square Word Calligraphy on the bird cage are questions from Xu Bing’s interview with Glenn Harper, entitled “Exterior Form - Interior Substance: A Conversation with Xu Bing”, the sound-activated bird can be read as symbolic of the artist’s voice. In many cultures, the bird is considered a messenger from the heavens, and in such a way, perhaps Xu’s “message” could be interpreted as analogous to the bird’s voice, as if the bird—or indeed the artist himself—is imparting some sort of wisdom to the viewer.

Yet, the work, according to the artist, also serves as a “humorous” piece, and in some ways is “self-mocking”, considering the impossibility of a bird “replying” to interview questions. It would appear that the artist often employs humour as a way of examining culture. On his creation of Book from the Sky, the artist had commented in the same interview with Harper: “[It] was a process of great seriousness and commitment…From the beginning, I was very clear about the importance of being completely serious, because when you take a pretence to the extreme, earnestly behaving as though it were real, then true absurdity emerges and the power of the art is enhanced.”⁵

Upon revisiting the artist’s initial quote about creating works “that said nothing”, one can see that humour and self-mockery are inherent to Xu’s personality as well as his works. But perhaps at the same time, such works that “say nothing” can also be seen as exuding some sort of universality: from the language of birds to amalgamations of English and Chinese, it is unquestionable that Xu is an artist who morphs freely between cultures. As he says, “In my work, I like to create this ambiguity, this awkwardness. Hopefully that way it defies labels and categories, and as such can lend itself to many different interpretations.”⁶

1 Claire Lui, “Being and Nothingness”, Xu Bing’s website

2 David Elliott, “Xu Bing, Tradition, Representation, and Language”, Xu Bing, Albion Gallery, 2011

3 Britta Erickson, The Art of Xu Bing: Words without Meaning, Meaning without Words, University of Washington Press, 2001

4 Taken from Artist’s own notes on Bird Language

5 Glenn Harper, "Exterior Form Interior Substance: A Conversation with Xu Bing." Sculpture 22:1, January 2003

6 Refer to 2