IN THE STUDY
The Phoenix in the Cathedral:
Xu Bing and the Citizen Migrant Crisis in "Boomtown" China
The Phoenix in the Cathedral:
Xu Bing and the Citizen Migrant Crisis in "Boomtown" China
by Deborah Fung
Deborah Fung is a licensed art psychotherapist, theologian, and artist. She has worked with churches to develop art, youth, and worship ministries. Fung holds an M.Div. from Regent College, an M.A. in Art Therapy from George Washington University, and a B.A. in Art and Biblical Studies from Wheaton College. She is a daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong and Guangdong, China.
It is not uncommon for the topics of immigration and migration to bring to the surface reflexive responses, because the policies generated to address them, or their implementation, have the capacity either to dignify or degrade the people in question, frequently touching on issues of inclusion and exclusion, labor and commerce, identity, justice, and power. The way a society treats new arrivals will create either a society with wounded people who suffer detrimental effects for generations, or a society of people dignified and able to extend themselves to others. Immigration and migration create opportunities to shape a society, not only through the determination of who is granted access but also by how they are treated when they arrive.
This topic has personal significance to me because I serve many clients from immigrant populations in my day job as a child and family art psychotherapist and mental health consultant. I frequently observe troubling behaviors that are rooted in or exacerbated by early childhood traumas related to family decisions to pursue migrant work or to immigrate. As a second generation Chinese-American myself, I see the wounds some of my peers have from traumas their parents experienced in making the transition to a new culture.
In this article, I consider Xu Bing’s work alongside a number of Abraham Kuyper’s theological concepts to help us think in a manner more faithful to Christian principles about immigration and migration.
In February 2014, the artist Xu Bing installed his monumental work Phoenix in the church of St. John the Divine, the Episcopal Cathedral in New York City. The placement of the work in this sacred space compels theological reflection on the work and its subject, the phoenix, a symbol drawn from Chinese mythology before being adopted in Christian iconography. Xu is certainly not the first artist to place non-liturgical art in a Christian worship space. But his decision to install a work of art with such culturally specific content and socio-political critique in an American cathedral that is also an active liturgical space invites theological dialogue. The work is composed of two phoenix birds made of construction detritus spanning the nave, suspended nearly two stories above the floor by thirty hoists and 140 feet of trusses. Weighing a total of twelve tons, the birds appear simultaneously cumbersome and miraculously graceful. Although they are made of heavy iron construction tools and debris, these components are so elegantly fitted together that they manifest these mythical creatures of power and miracles magnificently. In the Cathedral, Phoenix hovers in a dim, quiet, cavernous space illuminated by natural light streaming through large clear and stained glass windows and a few spotlights. When the natural light fades, small points of blue lights lining the sculpture appear as a constellation in the darkened nave.
Phoenix is the result of a commission Xu Bing received in 2008 to create a sculpture for the glass atrium of a new building designed by architect Cesar Pelli for the World Financial Center in Beijing. While visiting the site, Xu was appalled by the poor working and living conditions of the migrant construction workers building these luxury towers. Phoenix is his response to the dehumanization of the migrant workers he observed, the cost of the aggressive pursuit of wealth and economic growth; it is intended to bring to light the domestic migrant crisis in China.
With the economic opening up of China forty years ago, the rapid growth and development of manufacturing and construction have drawn millions of Chinese citizens living in small towns and rural areas to the cities, particularly in the south and east, in search of jobs and economic opportunity unavailable to them where they grew up. In China, each citizen has a household registration called a hukou that affords that person certain benefits that are not transferable if he or she moves to another locality. Chinese citizens effectively "give up" many fundamental benefits of their citizenship, and those of their children, if they migrate to other parts of China in pursuit of better work opportunities.
According to the 2017 Chinese National Bureau of Statistics report, there were an estimated 287 million Chinese migrants from rural areas working in other parts of China, constituting approximately one third of the national population.1 Rural migrant workers are workers with a rural household registration (hukou) working in urban areas; they are classified as rural migrants even if they were born and raised in the city by parents with rural hukou status. The Chinese communist government implemented this household registration system in 1958 to facilitate distribution of resources, control migration, and aid government surveillance of the Chinese populace. The hukou system was intended to keep the rural population in the countryside to work the farms in order to provide food and other resources for the urban population. However, when economic reforms accelerated in the 1980s, the cities required cheap labor, prompting the migration of hundreds of millions of mostly young people from the countryside to factories and construction sites of eastern and coastal "boom towns."2
Although Chinese migrant workers erect the buildings and work in industries that maintain and sustain a large Chinese city, the city appears blind to them and their needs. They do not have access to medical benefits or schools for their children. Their plight, even though they remain within their country of citizenship, is similar to that of migrants crossing national boundaries elsewhere. They must choose between opportunities for employment and the loss of residency entitlements and the "identity" they provide. This situation has reached a crisis level because of the sheer volume of people voluntarily choosing displacement in return for employment opportunity, as it has elsewhere in the world. When destination cities can no longer support the influx of people, the crisis becomes a housing crisis, a healthcare crisis, and a child welfare crisis.
In a manner not unlike Dutch vanitas paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, Xu Bing’s work acknowledges the glory and allure of wealth and luxury, but also exposes its cost in order to call people to rethink how the pursuit of national economic growth and personal prosperity might be achieved in a more balanced and humane way. Significantly, Xu’s use of symbols, approach to beauty, and inclusion of the ordinary (the ordinary person in particular) intersect with theologian Abraham Kuyper’s thoughts on art in some interesting ways. But it is important to acknowledge that Kuyper did not advocate for art in the church, arguing instead that a highly developed religion did not need symbols or imagery. This may appear at first to preclude a consideration of Xu’s Phoenix in relation to Kuyperian thought. By placing Phoenix in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, however, Xu is not asserting that religion needs more imagery. Rather, he located this work in a church because it needed to be contextualized within a sacred space. One might even say this placement constituted a quasi-liturgical act of offering and supplication, a prayer for blessing, an act that situates human beings in rightful relationship to the cosmos of which they are a part. We will return to consideration of the Phoenix after considering Xu’s life, Abraham Kuyper’s theology, and some of Xu’s other work.
Xu Bing and Abraham Kuyper
Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, People’s Republic of China, in 1955. When he was two years old, his family moved to Beijing where his parents took positions at Peking University. His father was head of the history department and his mother was a researcher in the department of library science.3 Xu recalls spending his childhood looking at books. When the Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966, academic colleagues of his father who were banished from their teaching positions left Xu printing supplies and books of French and Russian art.4 Like many intellectuals and educators, Xu’s father was paraded in the streets and jailed. His mother was "re-educated" and demoted. In the midst of turmoil and family disgrace, art was a source of solace for Xu. When teachers discovered his skills in lettering and calligraphy in high school, Xu was recruited to create posters and stenciled text for the school’s political propaganda. Because his family had been identified as politically problematic, Xu was eager to prove himself by participating in making posters for the revolution.5 However, his formal education was disrupted when he was reassigned to a rural village in the mountains outside Beijing from 1974 to 1977. The rural assignment was guided by a socialist principle that the educated should be involved with the ordinary people.6 In his assignment, Xu served as the village portraitist and calligrapher for weddings and funerals, gaining insight into the power of symbols and language. His calligraphy replaced the characters that village elders transcribed onto event banners from scraps of paper. He learned that the elders, though illiterate, transcribed these characters as a way of communicating with the spirits of the deceased. Xu also cooperated with peasants in the village to produce newsletters by contributing woodcut prints. This experience greatly informed his social consciousness as he explains:
It is not uncommon for the topics of immigration and migration to bring to the surface reflexive responses, because the policies generated to address them, or their implementation, have the capacity either to dignify or degrade the people in question, frequently touching on issues of inclusion and exclusion, labor and commerce, identity, justice, and power. The way a society treats new arrivals will create either a society with wounded people who suffer detrimental effects for generations, or a society of people dignified and able to extend themselves to others. Immigration and migration create opportunities to shape a society, not only through the determination of who is granted access but also by how they are treated when they arrive.
This topic has personal significance to me because I serve many clients from immigrant populations in my day job as a child and family art psychotherapist and mental health consultant. I frequently observe troubling behaviors that are rooted in or exacerbated by early childhood traumas related to family decisions to pursue migrant work or to immigrate. As a second generation Chinese-American myself, I see the wounds some of my peers have from traumas their parents experienced in making the transition to a new culture.
In this article, I consider Xu Bing’s work alongside a number of Abraham Kuyper’s theological concepts to help us think in a manner more faithful to Christian principles about immigration and migration.
In February 2014, the artist Xu Bing installed his monumental work Phoenix in the church of St. John the Divine, the Episcopal Cathedral in New York City. The placement of the work in this sacred space compels theological reflection on the work and its subject, the phoenix, a symbol drawn from Chinese mythology before being adopted in Christian iconography. Xu is certainly not the first artist to place non-liturgical art in a Christian worship space. But his decision to install a work of art with such culturally specific content and socio-political critique in an American cathedral that is also an active liturgical space invites theological dialogue. The work is composed of two phoenix birds made of construction detritus spanning the nave, suspended nearly two stories above the floor by thirty hoists and 140 feet of trusses. Weighing a total of twelve tons, the birds appear simultaneously cumbersome and miraculously graceful. Although they are made of heavy iron construction tools and debris, these components are so elegantly fitted together that they manifest these mythical creatures of power and miracles magnificently. In the Cathedral, Phoenix hovers in a dim, quiet, cavernous space illuminated by natural light streaming through large clear and stained glass windows and a few spotlights. When the natural light fades, small points of blue lights lining the sculpture appear as a constellation in the darkened nave.
Phoenix is the result of a commission Xu Bing received in 2008 to create a sculpture for the glass atrium of a new building designed by architect Cesar Pelli for the World Financial Center in Beijing. While visiting the site, Xu was appalled by the poor working and living conditions of the migrant construction workers building these luxury towers. Phoenix is his response to the dehumanization of the migrant workers he observed, the cost of the aggressive pursuit of wealth and economic growth; it is intended to bring to light the domestic migrant crisis in China.
With the economic opening up of China forty years ago, the rapid growth and development of manufacturing and construction have drawn millions of Chinese citizens living in small towns and rural areas to the cities, particularly in the south and east, in search of jobs and economic opportunity unavailable to them where they grew up. In China, each citizen has a household registration called a hukou that affords that person certain benefits that are not transferable if he or she moves to another locality. Chinese citizens effectively "give up" many fundamental benefits of their citizenship, and those of their children, if they migrate to other parts of China in pursuit of better work opportunities.
According to the 2017 Chinese National Bureau of Statistics report, there were an estimated 287 million Chinese migrants from rural areas working in other parts of China, constituting approximately one third of the national population.1 Rural migrant workers are workers with a rural household registration (hukou) working in urban areas; they are classified as rural migrants even if they were born and raised in the city by parents with rural hukou status. The Chinese communist government implemented this household registration system in 1958 to facilitate distribution of resources, control migration, and aid government surveillance of the Chinese populace. The hukou system was intended to keep the rural population in the countryside to work the farms in order to provide food and other resources for the urban population. However, when economic reforms accelerated in the 1980s, the cities required cheap labor, prompting the migration of hundreds of millions of mostly young people from the countryside to factories and construction sites of eastern and coastal "boom towns."2
Although Chinese migrant workers erect the buildings and work in industries that maintain and sustain a large Chinese city, the city appears blind to them and their needs. They do not have access to medical benefits or schools for their children. Their plight, even though they remain within their country of citizenship, is similar to that of migrants crossing national boundaries elsewhere. They must choose between opportunities for employment and the loss of residency entitlements and the "identity" they provide. This situation has reached a crisis level because of the sheer volume of people voluntarily choosing displacement in return for employment opportunity, as it has elsewhere in the world. When destination cities can no longer support the influx of people, the crisis becomes a housing crisis, a healthcare crisis, and a child welfare crisis.
In a manner not unlike Dutch vanitas paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, Xu Bing’s work acknowledges the glory and allure of wealth and luxury, but also exposes its cost in order to call people to rethink how the pursuit of national economic growth and personal prosperity might be achieved in a more balanced and humane way. Significantly, Xu’s use of symbols, approach to beauty, and inclusion of the ordinary (the ordinary person in particular) intersect with theologian Abraham Kuyper’s thoughts on art in some interesting ways. But it is important to acknowledge that Kuyper did not advocate for art in the church, arguing instead that a highly developed religion did not need symbols or imagery. This may appear at first to preclude a consideration of Xu’s Phoenix in relation to Kuyperian thought. By placing Phoenix in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, however, Xu is not asserting that religion needs more imagery. Rather, he located this work in a church because it needed to be contextualized within a sacred space. One might even say this placement constituted a quasi-liturgical act of offering and supplication, a prayer for blessing, an act that situates human beings in rightful relationship to the cosmos of which they are a part. We will return to consideration of the Phoenix after considering Xu’s life, Abraham Kuyper’s theology, and some of Xu’s other work.
Xu Bing and Abraham Kuyper
Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, People’s Republic of China, in 1955. When he was two years old, his family moved to Beijing where his parents took positions at Peking University. His father was head of the history department and his mother was a researcher in the department of library science.3 Xu recalls spending his childhood looking at books. When the Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966, academic colleagues of his father who were banished from their teaching positions left Xu printing supplies and books of French and Russian art.4 Like many intellectuals and educators, Xu’s father was paraded in the streets and jailed. His mother was "re-educated" and demoted. In the midst of turmoil and family disgrace, art was a source of solace for Xu. When teachers discovered his skills in lettering and calligraphy in high school, Xu was recruited to create posters and stenciled text for the school’s political propaganda. Because his family had been identified as politically problematic, Xu was eager to prove himself by participating in making posters for the revolution.5 However, his formal education was disrupted when he was reassigned to a rural village in the mountains outside Beijing from 1974 to 1977. The rural assignment was guided by a socialist principle that the educated should be involved with the ordinary people.6 In his assignment, Xu served as the village portraitist and calligrapher for weddings and funerals, gaining insight into the power of symbols and language. His calligraphy replaced the characters that village elders transcribed onto event banners from scraps of paper. He learned that the elders, though illiterate, transcribed these characters as a way of communicating with the spirits of the deceased. Xu also cooperated with peasants in the village to produce newsletters by contributing woodcut prints. This experience greatly informed his social consciousness as he explains:
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"The socialist idea that art serves the people plays an important role in my art. That part of my background becomes very strong in my work. That part of my biography is just not avoidable, I can’t escape it. It necessarily comes out in my work since it is part of my personality and part of my thinking and of seeing the world." 7
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Returning to Beijing, Xu completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts (1981 and 1987 respectively) at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 1990, he accepted a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and emigrated to the United States. His experiences of inclusion and exclusion due to language limitations and uncertainty about cultural codes were amplified during his time in the United States, which eventually led him to explore the complexities of language and its representation in his artwork. In 2008, Xu was invited back to Beijing where he was appointed Vice President of the Central Academy of Art. He currently maintains studios in New York and Beijing. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2002, the Wales International Art Prize, Artes Mundi, in 2004, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia University in 2010.8 Xu’s widespread notoriety in the United States and the world at large give him unique access to a powerful and elite audience even as his art urgently conveys the cost that the pursuit of wealth has exacted on the poor and disenfranchised of society.
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was a theologian, pastor, professor, journalist, and statesman in the Netherlands who advocated for Christian participation in the public sphere because of his concern about the growing marginalization of orthodox Christians from public influence. Kuyper was educated in "modern theology," but during his time ministering to a congregation in the country town of Beesd, at age thirty, Kuyper experienced a conversion to the orthodox Calvinism he observed in his congregants.9 In 1880, as part of his advocacy for Christian participation in the public sphere, he founded the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1886, he led a separation from the National Church of the Netherlands (NHK). In the 1890s, Kuyper delivered the Stone Lectures on Calvinism at Princeton Theological Seminary. Kuyper served as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1901–1905), rounding out a career of involvement in and leadership of a variety of institutions and arenas that shaped and directed Dutch society and public life.
Kuyper’s most prominent theological ideas are "sphere sovereignty," "antithesis," and "common grace."10 His writings reflect the centrality of human worth and the role of art in society that dovetail with Xu’s concerns about social justice, identity, power, and the role of art as being for the people. Kuyper encourages Christians to participate in and help shape the public sphere—in intellectual life, politics, science, and art—instead of abdicating their responsibility to others or creating a parallel Christian version of these enterprises. Similarly, Xu’s art invites participation by artists, marginalized workers, and viewers. Both Xu and Kuyper describe being significantly influenced by their encounters with people different from themselves: Kuyper describes the "simple country folk" of his parish shaping his spiritual life and perspective of Scripture,11 while Xu recounts the important lessons he learned when he was relocated to live and create graphic art in the countryside, a requisite part of Mao Zedong’s agenda for "educating young people" during the Cultural Revolution.12
Xu’s reassignment echoed the experience of an earlier displacement of Chinese people and artists during the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists (1946–1949). The displacement of vast numbers of Chinese brought a cultural reassessment as they observed the fragility of a more traditional way of life. This sentiment was expressed in genre prints. According to Dr. Theodore Herman, an American who was working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Shanghai in 1947, and known to woodcut artists as a print collector and journalist,
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was a theologian, pastor, professor, journalist, and statesman in the Netherlands who advocated for Christian participation in the public sphere because of his concern about the growing marginalization of orthodox Christians from public influence. Kuyper was educated in "modern theology," but during his time ministering to a congregation in the country town of Beesd, at age thirty, Kuyper experienced a conversion to the orthodox Calvinism he observed in his congregants.9 In 1880, as part of his advocacy for Christian participation in the public sphere, he founded the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1886, he led a separation from the National Church of the Netherlands (NHK). In the 1890s, Kuyper delivered the Stone Lectures on Calvinism at Princeton Theological Seminary. Kuyper served as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1901–1905), rounding out a career of involvement in and leadership of a variety of institutions and arenas that shaped and directed Dutch society and public life.
Kuyper’s most prominent theological ideas are "sphere sovereignty," "antithesis," and "common grace."10 His writings reflect the centrality of human worth and the role of art in society that dovetail with Xu’s concerns about social justice, identity, power, and the role of art as being for the people. Kuyper encourages Christians to participate in and help shape the public sphere—in intellectual life, politics, science, and art—instead of abdicating their responsibility to others or creating a parallel Christian version of these enterprises. Similarly, Xu’s art invites participation by artists, marginalized workers, and viewers. Both Xu and Kuyper describe being significantly influenced by their encounters with people different from themselves: Kuyper describes the "simple country folk" of his parish shaping his spiritual life and perspective of Scripture,11 while Xu recounts the important lessons he learned when he was relocated to live and create graphic art in the countryside, a requisite part of Mao Zedong’s agenda for "educating young people" during the Cultural Revolution.12
Xu’s reassignment echoed the experience of an earlier displacement of Chinese people and artists during the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists (1946–1949). The displacement of vast numbers of Chinese brought a cultural reassessment as they observed the fragility of a more traditional way of life. This sentiment was expressed in genre prints. According to Dr. Theodore Herman, an American who was working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Shanghai in 1947, and known to woodcut artists as a print collector and journalist,
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"The woodblock artists lived in the village, on the roads and in the sampans of their own people. They had got close to the forgotten men who grow the food, carry the loads, make the roads, pole boats and tramp down the years bearing arms. The Chinese woodcut men got the chance during the war to know and to picture what China is." 13
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One of these woodcut men was Li Hua, who became Xu’s first professor at the Central Academy. However, more than appreciation for a simple rural way of life, students reassigned to the countryside learned socialist values. Xu describes the sense of social responsibility he has as a result of that experience:
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"[W]hen I am working I consider how it will be received by society and how it will impact society, whether or not it will have any meaning or benefit to society. I consider whether or not it will be meaningful or beneficial to people. I hope my work will reach the broadest spectrum of people possible, everybody from the art expert to the average person." 14
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Kuyper was troubled by the drive toward secularization promoted by French revolutionary thought and enlightenment philosophy, the privatization of faith, and the impact this had on identity and society in his native Netherlands. He advocated "a Christian worldview to bear on personal piety, church polity, cultural and economic life, and a pluralist public square."15 Xu’s work explores identity and how it bears on human interactions in linguistics and visual symbols within a single nation—China—explaining, "My creative work is my means of thinking over problems, what is Chinese calligraphy, what is the essence of Chinese art, what is the original source of this culture, why the nature of Chinese people is as it is—through the thread of pictographic characters, a lot is made clear."16 Furthermore, Xu’s work offers a criticism of unchecked global commerce and the national drive for rapid economic growth in both the story of tobacco’s development into a booming commercial industry and that of China’s rural migrant workers. Because Xu explores a wide range of interconnected and overlapping social issues in his artwork—inclusion and exclusion, literacy and education, commerce and trade, identity and power, migration and social justice—an examination of several key examples that precede Phoenix will help us to understand better the complex interplay of these concerns as they appear in his work. Therefore, we will turn next to Xu’s works, Book from the Sky and Square Word Calligraphy.
Inclusion and Exclusion in Book from the Sky and Square Word Calligraphy
By selecting symbols and inverting them, Xu Bing deconstructs cultural boundaries to create a democratic experience of access and inaccessibility. In his installation, Book from the Sky (1987–1991), Xu brings into material reality the potential and limits of human knowledge. Book from the Sky consists of 4000 pseudo-Chinese characters printed into 100 four-volume sets of woodblock printed books laid open on the floor, with wall panels and with scrolls hung from the ceiling. The pseudo-characters are printed to appear as if they are authentic Chinese writing of words with meaning. Upon closer examination, however, those literate in Chinese discover these characters to be false compositions of Chinese radicals, so that the newly created characters have no actual meaning. It is like rearranging suffixes or prefixes to create non-words such as "nasal-ing" in English. To create this work, Xu devoted himself to inventing meaningless characters and carving them into wooden printing blocks over a period of three years. He adhered to rules of Chinese language in order to make his characters look as authentic as possible while creating combinations which do not exist in the Chinese lexicon. He carved the printing blocks in traditional Song Ti script, historically the official script for print. Texts printed in Song Ti script convey legitimacy and seriousness, like an English text produced in Times New Roman font. Xu explains that he employed every possible method to cause people to believe in the authenticity of this work. He did this by controlling the details of his rendering, such as dimensions, book style, margins, number of lines per page, the number of words per line, and so on.17 The effect of this work is that it invites Chinese readers to decipher and understand while simultaneously alienating them by defying those very things. For those who aren’t literate in Chinese and who don’t recognize that the characters are not legitimate, the work is naturally intimidating and even alienating. Xu considers this an equalizing effect of his work, stating: "It treats everyone as equal, educated or uneducated, Chinese or non-Chinese—because no one can read it."18 Significantly, this art creates an experience of exclusion when one feels illiterate, yet provides an experience of inclusion when it becomes apparent that everyone requires external illumination to understand the work.
This phenomenon relates to some important aspects of Abraham Kuyper’s theological concept of common grace which Vincent Bacote describes as follows: "Common grace is God’s restraint of the full effects of sin after the fall, preservation and maintenance of the created order, and the distribution of talents to human beings," which is seen in "the human inclination to serve one’s neighbor through work, pursue shalom in broken social situations, and defend equity in all forms of human interaction."19 Kuyper further asserts that through the doctrine of common grace, the "investigator’s love" is free from only pursuing the eternal to pursuing an understanding of the earth and the cosmos.20 Kuyper thus affirms that Christians should be engaged in so-called secular work and research and that the pursuits of non-Christians may also provide relevant knowledge and value.
In Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, this equalizing experience of illegibility and illiteracy constitutes an extension of several aspects of common grace. His use of symbols expresses the common grace Kuyper describes by offering an experience of our shared humanity through the awkward juxtaposition of expectant recognition and actual mistakenness. While the development of written language and its unifying power is a common grace, particularly attested to by the Chinese written language which has transcended geographic and ethnic boundaries and has connected the Chinese people for millennia, Xu demonstrates that the shared experience of encountering an indecipherable language can also be a common grace with the potential to unite us. It teaches compassion for the illiterate. It also helps us to understand the experience of so many migrants and immigrants who experience exclusion because of their inability to access the social tool of language and its symbols. In interviews, Xu recalls the influx of Western philosophies and art during the period of China’s "open doors" in the 1980s and his own experience of attempting to access what was once inaccessible, as well as his disorientation due to the dramatic differences between his Chinese framework and the cultural and linguistic codes of the west. This experience informs the encounter he creates for his audience in Book from the Sky where Chinese and non-Chinese alike encounter the same cultural dissonance and the frustration of being barred from understanding. It confronts the assumption that we can decode another culture. It is common grace that enables us to rebuild communication and reattempt understanding.
Book from the Sky presents us with text that appears to be communicative of shared meaning in order to challenge our assumption that what looks legible ought to be decipherable. Xu states that Book from the Sky has no meaning. But by his deft appropriation of communally developed cultural forms and traditions of written language to construct a "language" of which he is the sole creator, and by creating a language devoid of meaning, the work itself serves as a critique of the Chinese government’s alteration of language and disruption of education. During the Cultural Revolution the government frequently changed the written language, altering and simplifying Chinese characters. Xu has described his direct experience of this phenomenon when he was in school. Students would be learning a book of characters only to be told the very next day to rip the old characters out of their books because there were new characters that were to replace the old. In traditional Chinese political and religious thought, the "mandate of heaven" was used to justify an emperor’s rule. It was bestowed on a just and competent ruler. If there were natural disasters, these were understood as signs of heaven’s displeasure that the ruler was unworthy and that the mandate had been withdrawn. The ruler should then be overthrown. By addressing issues of power and exclusivity using the foil of Chinese language, Book from the Sky makes a powerful political statement as well, in a manner not unlike a prophetic call.
In still other works, Xu Bing more clearly pursues a desire for understanding and inclusion. In his Square Word Calligraphy (1994), Xu appropriates the square format of Chinese characters in order to deconstruct the rules of English writing. This creates English words arranged within a Chinese character format which appear at first indecipherable and foreign to the English reader, but are actually reformatted English words. The installation of this work often includes a classroom where viewers are invited to sit at a desk and practice writing Chinese calligraphy with a brush and ink. Xu’s instructions for the "stroke order" to copy these "characters" actually provides the letter order in which one writes the English word it presents. The English reader who cannot read Chinese discovers that in her attempt to copy these characters, she is in fact writing English words. The rules of written language that allows for the bridging of a pictographic written language and an alphabetic written language is more evidence of common grace. Whereas Book from the Sky confounds and disturbs Chinese readers by yanking them from false recognition to confusion and uncertainty, Square Word Calligraphy rewards and affirms English readers for drawing near to something that appears at first alien with recognition, understanding, and even fluency. Xu proposes a solution for reconciliation that is built on hospitality and accommodation. This generous hospitality of welcoming the English reader into the pleasure of calligraphic brushwork, the heart of Chinese writing and culture, is a rehearsal for reconciliation. It is a creative attempt to facilitate literacy and inclusion. The design of the artwork requires that the Chinese pictographic format accommodate English letters. In exchange, the English word accommodates by breaking the order of letters into unconventional arrangements so that the letters of the word fit into the square format of a Chinese character. The word appears as if a preliterate child wrote it, and yet it is legible; the meaning comprehensible.
Identity and Power in the Tobacco Exhibit
Xu’s Tobacco exhibit had three permutations: at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in 2000; in Shanghai in 2004; and in Richmond, Virginia, in 2005–2011.21 The exhibit, together with the locations in which it was shown, includes a number of works that recall the history and legacy of the American tobacco trade with China. The work also references the death of the artist’s own father from lung disease. This work is a powerful exploration of the value and cost of something beyond its object as a commodity for consumption. The artwork, however, is not only about the loaded relationships among tobacco, industry, and society. It is also about the material itself—the tobacco leaves, and the properties and processes of tobacco that define the relationship between human beings and tobacco. Xu’s Tobacco explores the pursuit of wealth by investors and their abuse of power by commercializing identity in order to market an addictive product, cigarettes, which falsely promises to impart glamor, prestige, and a modern identity on the user. Significantly, Tobacco also shows that this exploitation of a target consumer and the pursuit of wealth have also shaped the identity of the marketer.
One work in Xu’s Tobacco exhibit, titled First Class, takes the form of a tiger skin rug composed of standing cigarettes. In the Shanghai installation, the rug was composed of 660,000 "Wealth" brand cigarettes, the cheapest brand in China. In Virginia and Massachusetts, the rug was composed of 500,000 "First Class" cigarettes, a discount American brand. Xu creates the orange and white tiger stripes by standing the cigarettes on either the orange filter end or on the white tobacco end. Viewed from another angle, the stripes are brown and white depending on whether the tobacco end or white filter tip is visible.22 The piece is striking for its ingenuity in design. But it is also conceptually rich. The tiger skin rug is often associated with luxury, status, and domination, the pursuit of which is both seductive and dangerous. Similarly, the abundance of cigarettes beautifully organized in this way evokes the concomitant glamor, pull of addiction, and risks of smoking.23 The splendid tiger we see, however, is "skinned" and lifeless, composed of something ubiquitous, flimsy, and quickly consumed. Similarly, the marketing of cigarettes in China has been a ploy to sell an identity associated with glamor and luxury. Here, Xu offers a criticism of those who skinned the tiger of the Chinese market by creating a demand for an insalubrious product. The tobacco marketer’s accomplishments and identity are as superficially splendid and lifeless as a tiger skin rug. But significantly—and perhaps, ironically—the tiger is a mighty and protective guardian in Chinese mythology and legend, adding layers of complication to this work’s interpretation.
Xu Bing further explores the derivatives of the tobacco trade using archived advertising from the earliest stages of the global tobacco industry. In a collaborative poetry project titled Orinoco, Xu collected hundreds of stencil prints of brand names that appear on packaging and boxes. He invited his friend Rene Balcer to write a poem as an ode to the African-American women who performed the hard labor involved in tobacco processing. In his poem, Balcer kept the brand names intact and did not add any words. The first two lines incorporate five historic brands. "OH MY BLACK SATIN DEW DROP, / OH MY BLACK SWAN QUEEN OF THE EAST." This free verse poem invites the reader into active collaboration, as the lines run through several pages so the reader must determine where one line ends and another begins.24 Here, Xu provides a reference to slavery and indentured laborers—additional, and often unseen, human costs that are involved in the tobacco industry.
In addition to collaborating with other artists, Xu Bing frequently takes the viewer on a journey of creative exploration. Xu’s work often incorporates an educational component where he seeks to generate creative thought in the viewer by presenting work that allows us to look at a familiar everyday object from another perspective.25 In an interview about the Tobacco exhibition, Xu described his intent to examine inherent human issues such as self-professed helplessness and weaknesses. He explained that the project began with an interest in the aroma and production of tobacco and resulted in an "artistic means to explain sociological issues or sociological means injected into art."26 But more than that, his work seeks to disrupt "entrenched habits of thinking and viewing."27
To disrupt habits of thought resonates with Kuyper’s concept of "sphere sovereignty" which Kuyper conceived of as autonomous spheres of society, including religion, science, politics, and art, that must not infringe on or attempt to control the other spheres since all of these spheres already belong to God and attest to God’s glory.28 As Kuyper explains:
Inclusion and Exclusion in Book from the Sky and Square Word Calligraphy
By selecting symbols and inverting them, Xu Bing deconstructs cultural boundaries to create a democratic experience of access and inaccessibility. In his installation, Book from the Sky (1987–1991), Xu brings into material reality the potential and limits of human knowledge. Book from the Sky consists of 4000 pseudo-Chinese characters printed into 100 four-volume sets of woodblock printed books laid open on the floor, with wall panels and with scrolls hung from the ceiling. The pseudo-characters are printed to appear as if they are authentic Chinese writing of words with meaning. Upon closer examination, however, those literate in Chinese discover these characters to be false compositions of Chinese radicals, so that the newly created characters have no actual meaning. It is like rearranging suffixes or prefixes to create non-words such as "nasal-ing" in English. To create this work, Xu devoted himself to inventing meaningless characters and carving them into wooden printing blocks over a period of three years. He adhered to rules of Chinese language in order to make his characters look as authentic as possible while creating combinations which do not exist in the Chinese lexicon. He carved the printing blocks in traditional Song Ti script, historically the official script for print. Texts printed in Song Ti script convey legitimacy and seriousness, like an English text produced in Times New Roman font. Xu explains that he employed every possible method to cause people to believe in the authenticity of this work. He did this by controlling the details of his rendering, such as dimensions, book style, margins, number of lines per page, the number of words per line, and so on.17 The effect of this work is that it invites Chinese readers to decipher and understand while simultaneously alienating them by defying those very things. For those who aren’t literate in Chinese and who don’t recognize that the characters are not legitimate, the work is naturally intimidating and even alienating. Xu considers this an equalizing effect of his work, stating: "It treats everyone as equal, educated or uneducated, Chinese or non-Chinese—because no one can read it."18 Significantly, this art creates an experience of exclusion when one feels illiterate, yet provides an experience of inclusion when it becomes apparent that everyone requires external illumination to understand the work.
This phenomenon relates to some important aspects of Abraham Kuyper’s theological concept of common grace which Vincent Bacote describes as follows: "Common grace is God’s restraint of the full effects of sin after the fall, preservation and maintenance of the created order, and the distribution of talents to human beings," which is seen in "the human inclination to serve one’s neighbor through work, pursue shalom in broken social situations, and defend equity in all forms of human interaction."19 Kuyper further asserts that through the doctrine of common grace, the "investigator’s love" is free from only pursuing the eternal to pursuing an understanding of the earth and the cosmos.20 Kuyper thus affirms that Christians should be engaged in so-called secular work and research and that the pursuits of non-Christians may also provide relevant knowledge and value.
In Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, this equalizing experience of illegibility and illiteracy constitutes an extension of several aspects of common grace. His use of symbols expresses the common grace Kuyper describes by offering an experience of our shared humanity through the awkward juxtaposition of expectant recognition and actual mistakenness. While the development of written language and its unifying power is a common grace, particularly attested to by the Chinese written language which has transcended geographic and ethnic boundaries and has connected the Chinese people for millennia, Xu demonstrates that the shared experience of encountering an indecipherable language can also be a common grace with the potential to unite us. It teaches compassion for the illiterate. It also helps us to understand the experience of so many migrants and immigrants who experience exclusion because of their inability to access the social tool of language and its symbols. In interviews, Xu recalls the influx of Western philosophies and art during the period of China’s "open doors" in the 1980s and his own experience of attempting to access what was once inaccessible, as well as his disorientation due to the dramatic differences between his Chinese framework and the cultural and linguistic codes of the west. This experience informs the encounter he creates for his audience in Book from the Sky where Chinese and non-Chinese alike encounter the same cultural dissonance and the frustration of being barred from understanding. It confronts the assumption that we can decode another culture. It is common grace that enables us to rebuild communication and reattempt understanding.
Book from the Sky presents us with text that appears to be communicative of shared meaning in order to challenge our assumption that what looks legible ought to be decipherable. Xu states that Book from the Sky has no meaning. But by his deft appropriation of communally developed cultural forms and traditions of written language to construct a "language" of which he is the sole creator, and by creating a language devoid of meaning, the work itself serves as a critique of the Chinese government’s alteration of language and disruption of education. During the Cultural Revolution the government frequently changed the written language, altering and simplifying Chinese characters. Xu has described his direct experience of this phenomenon when he was in school. Students would be learning a book of characters only to be told the very next day to rip the old characters out of their books because there were new characters that were to replace the old. In traditional Chinese political and religious thought, the "mandate of heaven" was used to justify an emperor’s rule. It was bestowed on a just and competent ruler. If there were natural disasters, these were understood as signs of heaven’s displeasure that the ruler was unworthy and that the mandate had been withdrawn. The ruler should then be overthrown. By addressing issues of power and exclusivity using the foil of Chinese language, Book from the Sky makes a powerful political statement as well, in a manner not unlike a prophetic call.
In still other works, Xu Bing more clearly pursues a desire for understanding and inclusion. In his Square Word Calligraphy (1994), Xu appropriates the square format of Chinese characters in order to deconstruct the rules of English writing. This creates English words arranged within a Chinese character format which appear at first indecipherable and foreign to the English reader, but are actually reformatted English words. The installation of this work often includes a classroom where viewers are invited to sit at a desk and practice writing Chinese calligraphy with a brush and ink. Xu’s instructions for the "stroke order" to copy these "characters" actually provides the letter order in which one writes the English word it presents. The English reader who cannot read Chinese discovers that in her attempt to copy these characters, she is in fact writing English words. The rules of written language that allows for the bridging of a pictographic written language and an alphabetic written language is more evidence of common grace. Whereas Book from the Sky confounds and disturbs Chinese readers by yanking them from false recognition to confusion and uncertainty, Square Word Calligraphy rewards and affirms English readers for drawing near to something that appears at first alien with recognition, understanding, and even fluency. Xu proposes a solution for reconciliation that is built on hospitality and accommodation. This generous hospitality of welcoming the English reader into the pleasure of calligraphic brushwork, the heart of Chinese writing and culture, is a rehearsal for reconciliation. It is a creative attempt to facilitate literacy and inclusion. The design of the artwork requires that the Chinese pictographic format accommodate English letters. In exchange, the English word accommodates by breaking the order of letters into unconventional arrangements so that the letters of the word fit into the square format of a Chinese character. The word appears as if a preliterate child wrote it, and yet it is legible; the meaning comprehensible.
Identity and Power in the Tobacco Exhibit
Xu’s Tobacco exhibit had three permutations: at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in 2000; in Shanghai in 2004; and in Richmond, Virginia, in 2005–2011.21 The exhibit, together with the locations in which it was shown, includes a number of works that recall the history and legacy of the American tobacco trade with China. The work also references the death of the artist’s own father from lung disease. This work is a powerful exploration of the value and cost of something beyond its object as a commodity for consumption. The artwork, however, is not only about the loaded relationships among tobacco, industry, and society. It is also about the material itself—the tobacco leaves, and the properties and processes of tobacco that define the relationship between human beings and tobacco. Xu’s Tobacco explores the pursuit of wealth by investors and their abuse of power by commercializing identity in order to market an addictive product, cigarettes, which falsely promises to impart glamor, prestige, and a modern identity on the user. Significantly, Tobacco also shows that this exploitation of a target consumer and the pursuit of wealth have also shaped the identity of the marketer.
One work in Xu’s Tobacco exhibit, titled First Class, takes the form of a tiger skin rug composed of standing cigarettes. In the Shanghai installation, the rug was composed of 660,000 "Wealth" brand cigarettes, the cheapest brand in China. In Virginia and Massachusetts, the rug was composed of 500,000 "First Class" cigarettes, a discount American brand. Xu creates the orange and white tiger stripes by standing the cigarettes on either the orange filter end or on the white tobacco end. Viewed from another angle, the stripes are brown and white depending on whether the tobacco end or white filter tip is visible.22 The piece is striking for its ingenuity in design. But it is also conceptually rich. The tiger skin rug is often associated with luxury, status, and domination, the pursuit of which is both seductive and dangerous. Similarly, the abundance of cigarettes beautifully organized in this way evokes the concomitant glamor, pull of addiction, and risks of smoking.23 The splendid tiger we see, however, is "skinned" and lifeless, composed of something ubiquitous, flimsy, and quickly consumed. Similarly, the marketing of cigarettes in China has been a ploy to sell an identity associated with glamor and luxury. Here, Xu offers a criticism of those who skinned the tiger of the Chinese market by creating a demand for an insalubrious product. The tobacco marketer’s accomplishments and identity are as superficially splendid and lifeless as a tiger skin rug. But significantly—and perhaps, ironically—the tiger is a mighty and protective guardian in Chinese mythology and legend, adding layers of complication to this work’s interpretation.
Xu Bing further explores the derivatives of the tobacco trade using archived advertising from the earliest stages of the global tobacco industry. In a collaborative poetry project titled Orinoco, Xu collected hundreds of stencil prints of brand names that appear on packaging and boxes. He invited his friend Rene Balcer to write a poem as an ode to the African-American women who performed the hard labor involved in tobacco processing. In his poem, Balcer kept the brand names intact and did not add any words. The first two lines incorporate five historic brands. "OH MY BLACK SATIN DEW DROP, / OH MY BLACK SWAN QUEEN OF THE EAST." This free verse poem invites the reader into active collaboration, as the lines run through several pages so the reader must determine where one line ends and another begins.24 Here, Xu provides a reference to slavery and indentured laborers—additional, and often unseen, human costs that are involved in the tobacco industry.
In addition to collaborating with other artists, Xu Bing frequently takes the viewer on a journey of creative exploration. Xu’s work often incorporates an educational component where he seeks to generate creative thought in the viewer by presenting work that allows us to look at a familiar everyday object from another perspective.25 In an interview about the Tobacco exhibition, Xu described his intent to examine inherent human issues such as self-professed helplessness and weaknesses. He explained that the project began with an interest in the aroma and production of tobacco and resulted in an "artistic means to explain sociological issues or sociological means injected into art."26 But more than that, his work seeks to disrupt "entrenched habits of thinking and viewing."27
To disrupt habits of thought resonates with Kuyper’s concept of "sphere sovereignty" which Kuyper conceived of as autonomous spheres of society, including religion, science, politics, and art, that must not infringe on or attempt to control the other spheres since all of these spheres already belong to God and attest to God’s glory.28 As Kuyper explains:
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"The perfect sovereignty of the sinless Messiah at the same time directly denies and challenges all absolute sovereignty among sinful men on earth, and does so by dividing life into separate spheres, each with its own sovereignty. . . . [T]here are in life as many spheres as there are constellations in the sky where the circumference is drawn around a fixed radius . . . "each in its own order" [1Corinthians 15:23]. Just as we speak of a "moral world," a "scientific world," a "business world," the "world of art" . . . each comprises its own domains, each has its own Sovereign within its bounds. The cogwheels of these spheres engage each other, and precisely through that interaction emerges the rich multifaceted multiformity of human life." 29
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Xu Bing’s work and statements reflect this pluralism of views. His art attests to creativity for the sake of guiding the viewer to empathize with those who were overlooked or eclipsed by advertising, rather than for the sake of propaganda or profiteering. Xu’s stated intentions indicate his awareness of intersections among the arenas of art, education, religion, and government without his art becoming "educational art," "religious art," "political art," or "commercial art." As such, Xu’s art is an expression of Kuyper’s discussion of separate spheres and sphere sovereignty. The subject "tobacco" infiltrates many societal spheres including science, government, economics, and religion. As Xu researched this topic, he discovered the complexity of the relationships between tobacco and society. For instance, the city of Durham where Duke University is located is well known for both its cigarette factories and its cancer research institutes. Ironically, the funds for medical research come mainly from cigarette manufacturers.30 Xu has described his own reluctance to add to the body of propaganda related to tobacco, wanting instead to prompt thought about the complex and sometimes conflicting realities of the world in which we live.31
In his writings about art, Kuyper also discusses the importance of beauty: "From this it follows that beauty was something designed by God to be something powerful, having arisen from the pleasure of God, having been intentionally willed by God and having been called into existence by his almighty power."32 Kuyper argues that the existence and perception of beauty is evidence of common grace. He explains: "First, common grace has spared much paradise beauty and preserved it from loss. . . . Second, within the sinful human being common grace has preserved it from complete loss, the sense of this beauty in nature."33 Kuyper describes the artist’s role as instructing people in beauty in this way. "God has worked inwardly by his spirit among people in order to fortify this sense of beauty . . . and this still appears in the artistic genius of many people. . . . People saw variety. That variety was instructive. Exactly that vision and sense of variety became the powerful incentive to which . . . art owes its existence and its eminence."34
Despite Xu Bing’s claim that he is less concerned with form than with content in his art, his work manifests beauty in three distinct and fundamental ways: the elegant marrying of material and meaning, the quality of craftsmanship, and the transformation of ordinary materials into something truly extraordinary.
Migration and Social Justice in Phoenix
Xu Bing’s Phoenix draws attention to overlooked but integral elements of Chinese society, giving them the significance they are due. Phoenix (2008–2010) is a sculptural installation of a male and female phoenix bird, 90 feet and 100 feet long, respectively, suspended in mid-air approximately twenty feet above the ground.35 Weighing twelve tons, the two birds were assembled out of the detritus of construction materials with the assistance of migrant construction workers. In 2008, Xu received a commission for a sculpture for the atrium bridging the towers of a new World Financial Center designed by Cesar Pelli in Beijing.36 On visiting the construction site in preparation for his work, Xu was troubled by the conditions of the migrant workers who were hired to build the financial center. There was little regard for safety and the living conditions were squalid. Recognizing the unfairness of their plight, Xu was inspired to employ tools and debris from construction as art material to render the stark contrast between the miserable realities of the workers and the wealth represented by the high rises surrounding them.
In Phoenix, Xu Bing utilizes the very tools and machines that have helped build modern China in order to deliver critical commentary on modern China itself. This artistic strategy can be traced to the influence of Robert Rauschenberg’s 1985 exhibition in Beijing, one of the first exhibits of modern art from the west to be mounted in China after it opened its doors to the outside world. In China, the phoenix is a symbol of imperial power, identified with the empress. An emperor or empress was only bestowed with the "mandate of heaven" if he or she were a just ruler. Xu’s Phoenix establishes a link between imperial power and the powers that govern China today. It critiques the stewardship of power wielded by officials and government policies that shape and direct economic development, and exposes disparity between Chinese migrant workers and those who benefit from their labor. It is a reminder that the power bestowed on the government is intended to provide for all of the people of the nation. In addition to encouraging meditation on power and responsibility, Xu’s use of discarded materials draws our attention to the human component of the relationship between labor and wealth, highlighting the creative potential of human beings.
As cities continue to be built up and new wealth pours into China, the population of Chinese migrant workers in these cities also continues to grow. Despite being barred from many social services and citizen entitlements, these Chinese rural workers migrate to the cities hoping to gain a share of that new wealth and opportunity for their families. Migrant workers are especially vulnerable. They are subjected to low wages, work-related injuries, and job insecurity with little recourse and few protections against sickness, aging, and homelessness.37 Many live in derelict and overcrowded conditions at the cost of the welfare of their children and their education.38 The Chinese government plans to address these needs by granting urban hukou status to 5% more families in 2020, but this is far from providing an adequate solution for the vast majority of the people in question.39
In his discussion of the role of art in society, Kuyper writes,
In his writings about art, Kuyper also discusses the importance of beauty: "From this it follows that beauty was something designed by God to be something powerful, having arisen from the pleasure of God, having been intentionally willed by God and having been called into existence by his almighty power."32 Kuyper argues that the existence and perception of beauty is evidence of common grace. He explains: "First, common grace has spared much paradise beauty and preserved it from loss. . . . Second, within the sinful human being common grace has preserved it from complete loss, the sense of this beauty in nature."33 Kuyper describes the artist’s role as instructing people in beauty in this way. "God has worked inwardly by his spirit among people in order to fortify this sense of beauty . . . and this still appears in the artistic genius of many people. . . . People saw variety. That variety was instructive. Exactly that vision and sense of variety became the powerful incentive to which . . . art owes its existence and its eminence."34
Despite Xu Bing’s claim that he is less concerned with form than with content in his art, his work manifests beauty in three distinct and fundamental ways: the elegant marrying of material and meaning, the quality of craftsmanship, and the transformation of ordinary materials into something truly extraordinary.
Migration and Social Justice in Phoenix
Xu Bing’s Phoenix draws attention to overlooked but integral elements of Chinese society, giving them the significance they are due. Phoenix (2008–2010) is a sculptural installation of a male and female phoenix bird, 90 feet and 100 feet long, respectively, suspended in mid-air approximately twenty feet above the ground.35 Weighing twelve tons, the two birds were assembled out of the detritus of construction materials with the assistance of migrant construction workers. In 2008, Xu received a commission for a sculpture for the atrium bridging the towers of a new World Financial Center designed by Cesar Pelli in Beijing.36 On visiting the construction site in preparation for his work, Xu was troubled by the conditions of the migrant workers who were hired to build the financial center. There was little regard for safety and the living conditions were squalid. Recognizing the unfairness of their plight, Xu was inspired to employ tools and debris from construction as art material to render the stark contrast between the miserable realities of the workers and the wealth represented by the high rises surrounding them.
In Phoenix, Xu Bing utilizes the very tools and machines that have helped build modern China in order to deliver critical commentary on modern China itself. This artistic strategy can be traced to the influence of Robert Rauschenberg’s 1985 exhibition in Beijing, one of the first exhibits of modern art from the west to be mounted in China after it opened its doors to the outside world. In China, the phoenix is a symbol of imperial power, identified with the empress. An emperor or empress was only bestowed with the "mandate of heaven" if he or she were a just ruler. Xu’s Phoenix establishes a link between imperial power and the powers that govern China today. It critiques the stewardship of power wielded by officials and government policies that shape and direct economic development, and exposes disparity between Chinese migrant workers and those who benefit from their labor. It is a reminder that the power bestowed on the government is intended to provide for all of the people of the nation. In addition to encouraging meditation on power and responsibility, Xu’s use of discarded materials draws our attention to the human component of the relationship between labor and wealth, highlighting the creative potential of human beings.
As cities continue to be built up and new wealth pours into China, the population of Chinese migrant workers in these cities also continues to grow. Despite being barred from many social services and citizen entitlements, these Chinese rural workers migrate to the cities hoping to gain a share of that new wealth and opportunity for their families. Migrant workers are especially vulnerable. They are subjected to low wages, work-related injuries, and job insecurity with little recourse and few protections against sickness, aging, and homelessness.37 Many live in derelict and overcrowded conditions at the cost of the welfare of their children and their education.38 The Chinese government plans to address these needs by granting urban hukou status to 5% more families in 2020, but this is far from providing an adequate solution for the vast majority of the people in question.39
In his discussion of the role of art in society, Kuyper writes,
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"God himself inspires those who have breathtaking genius in the field of art. He makes them to see a beauty and to experience in their spirit something from beyond what the world can offer, something that, once it moves from their imagination to outward expression, enriches the world, delights those initiated into its meaning, and contributes to our human living something we never would have enjoyed were it not for this artistic capacity." 40
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Xu Bing’s Phoenix exposes the unjust situation of migrant workers within China to offer hope for a more equitable and just society. By hiring the migrant workers to work alongside him in the transformation of construction detritus into a work of art, Xu recognizes them as co-creators and elevates them as artists in acknowledgement of their profound value and shared humanity. He demonstrates the potential for re-formation and restoration. This is done through hospitality that welcomes and accommodates others.
Significantly, the phoenix birds embody a mythical narrative of self-sacrifice and mutual giving. Reflecting on the meaning of Phoenix, Xu recounts the story of the phoenix who flies into a fire to extinguish the flames and save many lives only to emerge from the fire with all of its feathers burned off.41 For its sacrifice, the phoenix is made king of the birds. In homage, all of the birds in the kingdom offer the phoenix one feather so that the phoenix might be covered again. The Chinese phoenix is often depicted as a conglomerate of parts and feathers from various species of birds. It is described as having a rooster’s head, a swallow’s beak, and pheasant and peacock feathers. This mythological physiognomy is fittingly represented by the variety of construction materials welded together in the piece.
When Xu Bing installed Phoenix in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, he placed it within a representation of the cosmos, wresting it from the realm of mythology to affix it firmly in the material realm. By relocating this mythological symbol in this earthly place, a building that represents, moreover, a microcosm of earthly creation, the artist also locates the ideas of self-sacrifice and mutual giving in earthly time and space. By placing this image and the story that lies behind it in this social, spiritual, and religious space, Xu suggests that empathy and the heart more broadly are key agents in social justice.
In the presence of the Phoenix sculptures, one feels first their immense weight as one takes in the heavy industrial machinery suspended overhead, held up by an elaborate system of chains, pulleys, and an aluminum grid. One feels trepidation, that by the grace of mathematical equations, the laws of physics, and the know-how of engineers, it is possible to stand beneath them and gaze upward. One sees what looks like a cement mixer dangling overhead. Heavy iron shovels of excavators are the bird’s talons. The sculpture is equally monstrous and marvelous for the ingenious use of these repurposed materials. It is apparent that the sculpture’s creators have looked beyond the designated purpose of an object in order to see its core shape and potential to evoke something else. Feathers are made of battered shovels and the head a jackhammer. Tail feathers are made of the red, white, and blue woven plastic sheeting that is visible everywhere at construction sites, used both to cover scaffolding and to make sturdy, carry-all, disposable bags for the workers. Everything about a bird that is soft, alive, or graceful, is rendered hard, inanimate, industrial, and dangerous. The sculpture is simultaneously elegant and grotesque. Xu describes it as a "giant transformer toy and a mythical bird."42
Prior to its installation at St. John the Divine, Phoenix was installed at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, a renovated factory building. It was exhibited with two other works by Xu Bing, First Class and Background Story 7, a recreation of a Chinese Qing dynasty masterpiece, a landscape ink drawing in a light box.43 Contextualized by Xu’s other works at MASS MoCA and the industrial building of the museum itself, reviewers surmised that together these works implicate global economics and the drive for wealth that so often comes at the expense of others. More specifically, these works by Xu reveal the social, political, and cultural consequences of China’s rapid growth into the world’s second largest economy in just thirty years, and the stark disparity between the newly emergent rich and the working poor.44
The relocation of Phoenix from a museum that was formerly a factory building to a serene Neo-Gothic Cathedral that continues in active worship and ministry is a bold move on Xu Bing’s part. While it appears that the Cathedral was the only space large enough in New York City to install the work, the accommodations required to do so were extreme. The worship space provides a new context that influences the hermeneutics that must be applied to the art. This new context insists that this art is not just about social justice and labor issues, but reaches beyond those issues to concerns that undergird them: our spirituality and common humanity. The other works from Xu’s MASS MoCA exhibit did not accompany Phoenix to St. John the Divine, further focusing the contemplation of Phoenix and its implications in this sacred space.
The Phoenix in Sacred Space
At St. John the Divine, Phoenix was located in the nave flanked by prayer chapels. These chapels include art as well: a Keith Haring altarpiece, Barberini tapestries of the life of Christ, and traditional religious icons.45 These works of art prompt those who come to the Cathedral to remember, to contemplate, to pray, and to hope. Cathedrals were built to uplift the masses with stained glass, to transport the supplicant and worshipper into heavenly light. Situating this sculpture in a worship space informs its meaning and interpretation. Its message regarding the treatment and value of migrant workers is no longer simply a message about labor, China and its internal policies, or the global economy. It shifts the focus to a more universal question that is fundamentally a spiritual one: What does it mean to be human? And in recognizing someone as a human being, how then should that person be treated?
In his lectures on religion, Abraham Kuyper describes an unmediated religion between God and the individual, stating: "In religion there must be no intermediation of any creature between God and the soul—all religion is the immediate work of God Himself, in the inner heart."46 This refers to Kuyper’s idea of "antithesis," that the Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit is distinctive, endowed with an altered frame of reference pertaining to the basis for the value of human being: If a person bears the image of God, then that person is either my brother or my neighbor, whom I am to love as myself. For the Christian contemplating the themes of Phoenix in the Cathedral, the essential question becomes: How have I loved that neighbor? It forces us to evaluate what it means to believe that we are all God’s children, equally part of his creation, and caretakers of that very creation in all of its facets. This returns us to Xu’s themes found in the art discussed here: literacy and language, inclusion and exclusion, accommodation and alienation, identity and power. The theological response to these issues is rooted in the idea that all human beings bear the image of God.
Everything about Phoenix points to the difference between humans and machines. It is made of mechanical tools which must be wielded by human beings. The sculpture itself was constructed and welded by human hands. Human beings make art because they are able to empathize and to be creative. Humans are creative because they bear the imago dei. The Christian gospels provide the promise that in Christ all human beings have access to God’s shalom, that is, ultimate flourishing and rest. Kuyper describes the Christian’s responsibility of "developing the world to a higher stage," as follows:
Significantly, the phoenix birds embody a mythical narrative of self-sacrifice and mutual giving. Reflecting on the meaning of Phoenix, Xu recounts the story of the phoenix who flies into a fire to extinguish the flames and save many lives only to emerge from the fire with all of its feathers burned off.41 For its sacrifice, the phoenix is made king of the birds. In homage, all of the birds in the kingdom offer the phoenix one feather so that the phoenix might be covered again. The Chinese phoenix is often depicted as a conglomerate of parts and feathers from various species of birds. It is described as having a rooster’s head, a swallow’s beak, and pheasant and peacock feathers. This mythological physiognomy is fittingly represented by the variety of construction materials welded together in the piece.
When Xu Bing installed Phoenix in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, he placed it within a representation of the cosmos, wresting it from the realm of mythology to affix it firmly in the material realm. By relocating this mythological symbol in this earthly place, a building that represents, moreover, a microcosm of earthly creation, the artist also locates the ideas of self-sacrifice and mutual giving in earthly time and space. By placing this image and the story that lies behind it in this social, spiritual, and religious space, Xu suggests that empathy and the heart more broadly are key agents in social justice.
In the presence of the Phoenix sculptures, one feels first their immense weight as one takes in the heavy industrial machinery suspended overhead, held up by an elaborate system of chains, pulleys, and an aluminum grid. One feels trepidation, that by the grace of mathematical equations, the laws of physics, and the know-how of engineers, it is possible to stand beneath them and gaze upward. One sees what looks like a cement mixer dangling overhead. Heavy iron shovels of excavators are the bird’s talons. The sculpture is equally monstrous and marvelous for the ingenious use of these repurposed materials. It is apparent that the sculpture’s creators have looked beyond the designated purpose of an object in order to see its core shape and potential to evoke something else. Feathers are made of battered shovels and the head a jackhammer. Tail feathers are made of the red, white, and blue woven plastic sheeting that is visible everywhere at construction sites, used both to cover scaffolding and to make sturdy, carry-all, disposable bags for the workers. Everything about a bird that is soft, alive, or graceful, is rendered hard, inanimate, industrial, and dangerous. The sculpture is simultaneously elegant and grotesque. Xu describes it as a "giant transformer toy and a mythical bird."42
Prior to its installation at St. John the Divine, Phoenix was installed at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, a renovated factory building. It was exhibited with two other works by Xu Bing, First Class and Background Story 7, a recreation of a Chinese Qing dynasty masterpiece, a landscape ink drawing in a light box.43 Contextualized by Xu’s other works at MASS MoCA and the industrial building of the museum itself, reviewers surmised that together these works implicate global economics and the drive for wealth that so often comes at the expense of others. More specifically, these works by Xu reveal the social, political, and cultural consequences of China’s rapid growth into the world’s second largest economy in just thirty years, and the stark disparity between the newly emergent rich and the working poor.44
The relocation of Phoenix from a museum that was formerly a factory building to a serene Neo-Gothic Cathedral that continues in active worship and ministry is a bold move on Xu Bing’s part. While it appears that the Cathedral was the only space large enough in New York City to install the work, the accommodations required to do so were extreme. The worship space provides a new context that influences the hermeneutics that must be applied to the art. This new context insists that this art is not just about social justice and labor issues, but reaches beyond those issues to concerns that undergird them: our spirituality and common humanity. The other works from Xu’s MASS MoCA exhibit did not accompany Phoenix to St. John the Divine, further focusing the contemplation of Phoenix and its implications in this sacred space.
The Phoenix in Sacred Space
At St. John the Divine, Phoenix was located in the nave flanked by prayer chapels. These chapels include art as well: a Keith Haring altarpiece, Barberini tapestries of the life of Christ, and traditional religious icons.45 These works of art prompt those who come to the Cathedral to remember, to contemplate, to pray, and to hope. Cathedrals were built to uplift the masses with stained glass, to transport the supplicant and worshipper into heavenly light. Situating this sculpture in a worship space informs its meaning and interpretation. Its message regarding the treatment and value of migrant workers is no longer simply a message about labor, China and its internal policies, or the global economy. It shifts the focus to a more universal question that is fundamentally a spiritual one: What does it mean to be human? And in recognizing someone as a human being, how then should that person be treated?
In his lectures on religion, Abraham Kuyper describes an unmediated religion between God and the individual, stating: "In religion there must be no intermediation of any creature between God and the soul—all religion is the immediate work of God Himself, in the inner heart."46 This refers to Kuyper’s idea of "antithesis," that the Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit is distinctive, endowed with an altered frame of reference pertaining to the basis for the value of human being: If a person bears the image of God, then that person is either my brother or my neighbor, whom I am to love as myself. For the Christian contemplating the themes of Phoenix in the Cathedral, the essential question becomes: How have I loved that neighbor? It forces us to evaluate what it means to believe that we are all God’s children, equally part of his creation, and caretakers of that very creation in all of its facets. This returns us to Xu’s themes found in the art discussed here: literacy and language, inclusion and exclusion, accommodation and alienation, identity and power. The theological response to these issues is rooted in the idea that all human beings bear the image of God.
Everything about Phoenix points to the difference between humans and machines. It is made of mechanical tools which must be wielded by human beings. The sculpture itself was constructed and welded by human hands. Human beings make art because they are able to empathize and to be creative. Humans are creative because they bear the imago dei. The Christian gospels provide the promise that in Christ all human beings have access to God’s shalom, that is, ultimate flourishing and rest. Kuyper describes the Christian’s responsibility of "developing the world to a higher stage," as follows:
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"For this reason, the [Christian] cannot shut [oneself] up in [one’s] church and abandon the world to its fate. [The Christian] feels, rather, [a] high calling to push the development of this world to an even higher stage, and to do this in constant accordance with God’s ordinance, for the sake of God, upholding, in the midst of so much painful corruption, everything that is honorable, lovely, and of good report among [human beings]." 47
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In the context of the sacred space of the Cathedral, Xu’s sculpture asks the faithful audience to consider whether its pursuits have brought more or less shalom to the world and all human beings.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of New York. The Diocese is active in justice issues related to migrant workers and immigrants, and has a history of advocacy and inclusion of the "other." As the first and only Chinese artist to exhibit in this landmark Cathedral, particularly with such an expensive and cumbersome exhibit (the front doors of the Cathedral had to be removed so that the sculptures could be brought into the building), St. John’s demonstrated hospitality and inclusion. Furthermore, by accepting a work by an artist that was so specifically related to the artist’s local experience of migrant workers, the church recognized that this work speaks not only of a political and social problem in China. It also speaks to the underlying issue that is social and spiritual in nature and global in scope: whether we really believe that every person bears the imago dei and whether we treat each other as image bearers. Xu Bing poses these questions in quite concrete terms through his art: Do we create policies that exclude or include, as we saw in Book from the Sky? Do we alienate others by our privilege and language or accommodate the other and encourage reconciliation, exemplified by Square Word Calligraphy? Do we build our identity on superficial self-serving pursuits and the abusive exercise of power or on the virtues of social justice and responsibility, as revealed in First Class and Phoenix?
In the Chinese allegory of the phoenix, healing only comes after sacrifice and mutual giving. In the creation of the Phoenix sculptures, Xu solicited the collaboration of the migrant workers he had met. He addressed their need, in the concept of the work and in its making, at no small cost to himself. Unhappy with the work, the developers who commissioned it withdrew their support and refused it for their World Financial Center.48 Phoenix has been exhibited only four times: Shanghai 2010 Expo, Today Art Museum in Beijing (also in 2010), MASS MoCA (2012–2013), and St. John the Divine (2014–2015). At both of its exhibitions in China, the sculptures were abruptly removed from the show earlier than scheduled, exacting yet another cost from Xu.49 Akin to each of the birds in the animal kingdom contributing a feather to the phoenix, individual migrant workers contributed their equipment and ideas to Xu’s creative endeavor. In return, he showed them for who they really are, the unseen makers who build and maintain China’s cities. His sacrifice built the Phoenix. Their sacrifices built the World Financial Center and by extension, China’s burgeoning wealth and prosperity.
Kuyper’s theological system sought to mitigate the bifurcation of the spiritual and material dimensions of life.50 He argued that if societal spheres could truly develop free from interference by the others, each sphere could more readily achieve further innovation and development. This development constitutes a contribution to human knowledge and investigation of creation that is a human responsibility. He saw art as one of these spheres that was given to humanity at the time of God’s creation of the world for humankind’s exercise and benefit.51 Kuyper argues that the purpose of art is not to imitate nature, but to "reveal to us a higher reality than is offered by this sinful world. . . . Art functions to remind humans of lost beauty of paradise and anticipation of future glory."52 Kuyper further argues that beauty is an objective reality. I see this striving for a higher reality throughout Xu’s work which exposes our weaknesses and limits, both individual and societal. And like the words of the prophets, his art challenges us in order to prompt change in the right direction. In this way his art is hopeful. Good art generates considered reflection and response. Phoenix does just that.
While Xu Bing’s art carries a clear and urgent call to ethical practices and policies, his art is also spiritual in that he interrogates accepted cultural norms with existential questions. The Chinese myth of the phoenix involves suffering and threat, self-sacrifice, rebirth, and renewal. A core tenet of Christianity is that ethical action is an essential outworking of the life of faith (Matthew 5–7 and James 2:14–26). The stark industrial setting of the MASS MoCA exhibition of Phoenix emphasized the contrast between the grandeur of the sculptures when seen initially from a distance, then their ugliness when viewed close up with intimate proximity, evoking a cynical perspective of mistrust of one’s perceptions. In comparison, its exhibition at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine evokes a sense of wonder and hope reminding us of our common humanity, our responsibilities as stewards of this world and all who reside in it, of the call to sacrifice for others, and our longing for shalom. Clearly context matters, providing the frame within which we see this work of art to apprehend its meaning.
The art of Xu Bing provides themes and categories that assist us in thinking about a number of issues related to migration and immigration. These include the role of language and literacy in exclusion or inclusion, mutual accommodation as a means of hospitality and reconciliation, the relationship between identity and power, and collaboration as a means to social justice. Abraham Kuyper’s theological framework and concepts of common grace, antithesis, and sphere sovereignty facilitate theological reflection on the art of Xu and the themes, critiques, and aspirations that his art express. Kuyper enables us to see in the art of Xu an expression of human dignity, the human capacity for creative work that is an element of the imago dei that resides in each person, and the outworking of God’s love and redemptive plan for creation. Allowing these principles to inform our thought processes as we consider the many challenges posed by human migration and immigration should then inform our responses. Significantly, Xu became interested in exhibiting Phoenix at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine after visiting there and witnessing the Blessing of the Animals (also known as the Blessing of the Beasts) at the Feast of St. Francis. Just as blessing might be brought to the larger community outside the church through the blessing of pets, how much more blessing might the church bring to the world by reminding us that we are all bearers of the image of God. Placing Phoenix in St. John the Divine dignifies not only the Chinese migrant workers who inspired it but also honors the dignity of invisible and marginalized peoples everywhere.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of New York. The Diocese is active in justice issues related to migrant workers and immigrants, and has a history of advocacy and inclusion of the "other." As the first and only Chinese artist to exhibit in this landmark Cathedral, particularly with such an expensive and cumbersome exhibit (the front doors of the Cathedral had to be removed so that the sculptures could be brought into the building), St. John’s demonstrated hospitality and inclusion. Furthermore, by accepting a work by an artist that was so specifically related to the artist’s local experience of migrant workers, the church recognized that this work speaks not only of a political and social problem in China. It also speaks to the underlying issue that is social and spiritual in nature and global in scope: whether we really believe that every person bears the imago dei and whether we treat each other as image bearers. Xu Bing poses these questions in quite concrete terms through his art: Do we create policies that exclude or include, as we saw in Book from the Sky? Do we alienate others by our privilege and language or accommodate the other and encourage reconciliation, exemplified by Square Word Calligraphy? Do we build our identity on superficial self-serving pursuits and the abusive exercise of power or on the virtues of social justice and responsibility, as revealed in First Class and Phoenix?
In the Chinese allegory of the phoenix, healing only comes after sacrifice and mutual giving. In the creation of the Phoenix sculptures, Xu solicited the collaboration of the migrant workers he had met. He addressed their need, in the concept of the work and in its making, at no small cost to himself. Unhappy with the work, the developers who commissioned it withdrew their support and refused it for their World Financial Center.48 Phoenix has been exhibited only four times: Shanghai 2010 Expo, Today Art Museum in Beijing (also in 2010), MASS MoCA (2012–2013), and St. John the Divine (2014–2015). At both of its exhibitions in China, the sculptures were abruptly removed from the show earlier than scheduled, exacting yet another cost from Xu.49 Akin to each of the birds in the animal kingdom contributing a feather to the phoenix, individual migrant workers contributed their equipment and ideas to Xu’s creative endeavor. In return, he showed them for who they really are, the unseen makers who build and maintain China’s cities. His sacrifice built the Phoenix. Their sacrifices built the World Financial Center and by extension, China’s burgeoning wealth and prosperity.
Kuyper’s theological system sought to mitigate the bifurcation of the spiritual and material dimensions of life.50 He argued that if societal spheres could truly develop free from interference by the others, each sphere could more readily achieve further innovation and development. This development constitutes a contribution to human knowledge and investigation of creation that is a human responsibility. He saw art as one of these spheres that was given to humanity at the time of God’s creation of the world for humankind’s exercise and benefit.51 Kuyper argues that the purpose of art is not to imitate nature, but to "reveal to us a higher reality than is offered by this sinful world. . . . Art functions to remind humans of lost beauty of paradise and anticipation of future glory."52 Kuyper further argues that beauty is an objective reality. I see this striving for a higher reality throughout Xu’s work which exposes our weaknesses and limits, both individual and societal. And like the words of the prophets, his art challenges us in order to prompt change in the right direction. In this way his art is hopeful. Good art generates considered reflection and response. Phoenix does just that.
While Xu Bing’s art carries a clear and urgent call to ethical practices and policies, his art is also spiritual in that he interrogates accepted cultural norms with existential questions. The Chinese myth of the phoenix involves suffering and threat, self-sacrifice, rebirth, and renewal. A core tenet of Christianity is that ethical action is an essential outworking of the life of faith (Matthew 5–7 and James 2:14–26). The stark industrial setting of the MASS MoCA exhibition of Phoenix emphasized the contrast between the grandeur of the sculptures when seen initially from a distance, then their ugliness when viewed close up with intimate proximity, evoking a cynical perspective of mistrust of one’s perceptions. In comparison, its exhibition at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine evokes a sense of wonder and hope reminding us of our common humanity, our responsibilities as stewards of this world and all who reside in it, of the call to sacrifice for others, and our longing for shalom. Clearly context matters, providing the frame within which we see this work of art to apprehend its meaning.
The art of Xu Bing provides themes and categories that assist us in thinking about a number of issues related to migration and immigration. These include the role of language and literacy in exclusion or inclusion, mutual accommodation as a means of hospitality and reconciliation, the relationship between identity and power, and collaboration as a means to social justice. Abraham Kuyper’s theological framework and concepts of common grace, antithesis, and sphere sovereignty facilitate theological reflection on the art of Xu and the themes, critiques, and aspirations that his art express. Kuyper enables us to see in the art of Xu an expression of human dignity, the human capacity for creative work that is an element of the imago dei that resides in each person, and the outworking of God’s love and redemptive plan for creation. Allowing these principles to inform our thought processes as we consider the many challenges posed by human migration and immigration should then inform our responses. Significantly, Xu became interested in exhibiting Phoenix at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine after visiting there and witnessing the Blessing of the Animals (also known as the Blessing of the Beasts) at the Feast of St. Francis. Just as blessing might be brought to the larger community outside the church through the blessing of pets, how much more blessing might the church bring to the world by reminding us that we are all bearers of the image of God. Placing Phoenix in St. John the Divine dignifies not only the Chinese migrant workers who inspired it but also honors the dignity of invisible and marginalized peoples everywhere.
NOTES
- Data from "Migrant Workers and Their Children," China Labour Bulletin (June 27, 2013). https://www.clb.org.hk/content/migrant-workers-and-their-children, accessed August 4, 2018.
- Ibid.
- https://www.theartstory.org/artist-xu-bing-life-and-legacy.htm, accessed January 4, 2019.
- Shelaugh Vainker and Xu Bing, Landscape/Landscript: Nature as Language in the Art of Xu Bing (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2013), 6.
- Ibid., 14.
- Ibid., 3.
- Xu Bing, "A Conversation with Xu Bing" in Woodcuts in Modern China, 1937–2008: Towards a Universal Pictorial Language, ed. Joachim Homann (Hamilton, N.Y.: Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, 2009), 38.
- "PHOENIX: Xu Bing at the Cathedral," Press Release for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Jan 17, 2014. https://www.stjohndivine.org/uploads/pressrelease/files/Phoenix_Press_Release_1.18_.pdf, accessed November 22, 2018.
- Jan de Bruijn, "Calvinism and Romanticism: Abraham Kuyper as a Calvinist Politician" in Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham’s Legacy in the Twenty First Century, ed. Luis E. Lugo (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 47.
- Vincent E. Bacote, "Introduction" in Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Sciencesand Art, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 24.
- John Hendrick de Vries, "Biographical Note" in Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism: Six Lectures from the Stone Foundation Lectures Delivered at Princeton University (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1931), vi.
- The communist party leader Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in August of 1966 because he felt that party leadership was moving away from ideological purity and that his own position in the government was weakening. Mao gathered a group of radicals, the "Gang of Four," to attack party leadership and reassert his authority. During the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, Mao suspended the nation’s schools and mobilized the nation’s youth to discipline their leaders for embracing bourgeois values and abandoning revolutionary values. Students formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guards and attacked the elderly and intellectuals. It is estimated that 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution. Millions more suffered imprisonment, seizure of property, torture or humiliation. For a brief history of the Cultural Revolution, see https://www.history.com/topics/china/cultural-revolution, accessed January 5, 2019.
- Leslie Eliet, "The Herman Collection of Modern Chinese Woodcuts 1937–1948" in Homann, Woodcuts in Modern China, 47.
- Britta Erickson and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), The Art of Xu Bing: Words without Meaning, Meaning without Words (Asian Art & Culture Series; Washington D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 67.
- Max Stackhouse, "Preface," in Lugo, Belgian Pluralism and Public Life, xii.
- Vainker and Xu, Landscape, 127.
- Xu Bing, "An Artist’s View," in Persistence-Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing, eds. Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C. Y. Ching, and Bing Xu (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 103.
- Ibid., 103
- Bacote in Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 26.
- Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 129.
- John B. Ravenal, "Tobacco as a Universal Language" in Ravenal, et. al. eds., Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, Duke/Shanghai/Virginia, 1999–2011, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Charlottesville, VA: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; University of Virginia Press, 2011), 17, 28-29.
- Ibid., 21.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 26.
- Xu Bing, "Tobacco Project 1,2,3," in Ravenal, Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, 64.
- Ibid., 67.
- Ravenal, Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, 14.
- Peter Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (2nd ed.: Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 222.
- Abraham Kuyper, "Sphere Sovereignty," in Abraham Kuyper: Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 467.
- Wu Hung, "Xu Bing’s Tobacco Project and its Context," in Ravenal, Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, 36.
- Xu, in Ravenal, Xu Bing: Tobacco Project, 64-66.
- Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 127.
- Ibid., 134.
- Ibid., 136.
- Carol Vogel, "Xu Bing Installs His Sculptures at St. John the Divine," The New York Times (February 14, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/arts/design/xu-bing-installs-his-sculptures-at-st-john-the-divine.html, accessed October 1, 2018.
- Cate McQuaid, "Review: ‘Xu Bing: Phoenix’ at MASS MoCA," The Boston Globe (February 9, 2013), https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2013/02/09/review-bing-phoenix-mass-moca/zfsDam7FUWUbvWFPQvyuqL/story.html, accessed October 1, 2018.
- The majority of migrant workers have only a middle-school education: 27.4 percent have some form of higher education. Ten point three percent went to college. Most migrant workers are employed in low-wage jobs in manufacturing, construction, and service industries, working long hours with little job security. The 2008 Labor Contract Law mandates formal employment contracts. Initially, migrant workers saw some benefit, but in 2016, only 35.1 percent of migrant workers actually had signed employment contracts. According to a 2017 report from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, only 22 percent of migrant workers had a pension or basic medical insurance. Data from "Migrant Workers and Their Children," China Labour Bulletin (June 27, 2013). https://www.clb.org.hk/content/migrant-workers-and-their-children, accessed August 4, 2018.
- Ibid. According to a 2017 National Bureau of Statistics survey, migrant workers have about 19.8 square meters of living space, although in medium sized cities (cities with a population of 5 million in China) that number drops to 15.7 square meters. About one third do not have a refrigerator, washing machine, or private toilet. But about 90 percent have access to the internet through their mobile phone. According to a 2016 NBS survey, about 60 percent of workers rent their own accommodations as opposed to living in a dormitory, thus increasing their living expenses. Because migrant workers are excluded from public housing, they have to rent apartments in poorly constructed or dilapidated buildings in remote areas of the city. Rent for such apartments can take up a sizeable portion of income. For example, rent for a small room with a shared kitchen and bathroom costs from 500-1000 yuan a month, while an apartment with a private kitchen and bathroom can be 3000. The wages in factories, restaurants, supermarkets, or for cleaners typically range from 2600 to 5000 yuan a month. These living conditions may be tolerable for adults but are dangerous and sometimes lethal for children. Many migrant workers leave their children in their hometowns to be raised by relatives. This too has an impact on the social and emotional development of these children.
- Ibid. The Chinese government expects that by the year 2020, 60 percent of the Chinese population will be living in cities. It plans to increase the number of people with an urban household registration from 40 percent of the population in 2016 to 45 percent in 2020. However, some argue that even if the government is able to accomplish this, the change in hukou status will be of little benefit. Often newly urbanized families are granted an urban hukou only after the government, in league with major developers, forcibly repossessed their land. The hukou status is usually for a small- or medium-sized city in the same province where new residents will not be seen as a threat. In contrast, major cities like Beijing and Shanghai have population caps, and resort to coercive measures to remove "low end" populations to achieve their target. Most people in China agree that reform of the household registration system and increased provisions for the schooling and welfare of migrant workers is necessary. A Caixin editorial from March 2012 describes the system as "morally indefensible in today’s China." However, the central government appears to have left hukou reform to the regional and provincial cities to initiate. Advocates for reform are concerned that the pace of reform in these cities will be determined by need for land, labor, and economic resources. In addition, there has been staunch opposition to hukou reform by the police. But new facial recognition software and social credit scores will give police better means of social control, so they may depend less on the hukou system for that purpose.
- Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder, 152.
- Daniel Traub, director, Xu Bing: Phoenix, DVD (New York: Magic Lantern Films, 2013).
- Lily Wei, "Xu Bing: Interview," Studio International: Visual Arts, Design, Architecture, November 3, 2014, https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/xu-bing-interview-phoenix-project-at-the-cathedral, accessed January 9, 2019.
- McQuaid, "Review: ‘Xu Bing.’"
- Hwa Young Caruso, "‘Contemporary Chinese Artist Xu Bing: Rising Phoenix’ at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass." International Journal of Multicultural Education 15, no. 2 (2013), 9.
- "Current Exhibitions: Cathedral of Saint John the Divine," http://www.stjohndivine.org/programs/art/current-exhibitions, accessed October 9, 2018.
- Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 58–59.
- Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 73. I have replaced "Calvinist" with "Christian" in this quotation because Kuyper’s purpose was to explain essential Christian doctrine which was, for him, grounded in Calvinism.
- Wei, "Xu Bing: Interview." According to Xu Bing, the developers asked him to make the sculptures more "decorative" and he refused. He also suspects that the developers may have been suffering a financial loss at the time.
- McQuaid, "Review: ‘Xu Bing.’"
- Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, ed. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2015), 165–69.
- Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 155.
- Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview, 210.
Xu Bing, Phoenix, 2008–2010. Installation in The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, 2014. Photography by Jesse Robert Coffino (2014), Courtesy of The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
Xu Bing, Honor and Splendor, 2004. Mixed media installation / 660,000 “Wealth” brand cigarettes, spray adhesive, cardboard; approx. 354” x 275” (900 x 700 cm.). Installation view at Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, 2004. © Xu Bing Studio
Xu Bing, Book from the Sky (1987–1991), Installation of hand-printed books and ceiling and wall scrolls printed from wood letterpress type; ink on paper, Dimensions: Each book, open: 18 1/8 × 20 in. (46 × 51 cm.); three ceiling scrolls, each: 38 in. × approx. 114 ft. 9 7/8 in. (96.5 × 3500 cm.); each wall scroll: 9 ft. 2 1/4 in. × 39 3/8 in. (280 × 100 cm.) © Xu Bing Studio