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XuBing has contributed profoundly in bringing the nature of the language to the domestic and the global viewers. He breaks the existing frames of culture, tradition, and languages to rebuild the connections between pictogram era and symbolic systems, east and west, and ancient and modern. He addresses that everyone is equal in front of the art when he created the book from the sky and the book from the ground. He strives to bring different perspectives from life to people and reflects the problems in the society when he created the Chinese landscape painting style with wasted materials and Phoenix with all kinds of materials from constructions site. As he mentioned in the Intellectual by Nature, Poet at Heart: Xu Bing | Brilliant Ideas hosted by Bloomberg “I don’t want the audience to have a very clear understanding of my works that they can come to an immediate conclusion about what I might be talking about. I hope there is a variety of a possibility. All of these methods are used to bring the viewer to a new place, a place where their senses have never been before.” (Nov 20, 2015).  Daniel Szehin Ho, Editor-in-Chief from Randian Magazine mentioned XuBing: “XuBing is really one of the most important Chinese artists in the last 20-30 years. His art is the type of art that crosses times and countries, people still can gain some meaning from it. That is the art should do.” (Nov 20, 2015)

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January 22, 2017 at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin
200 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Austin, TX 78701. USA

XuBing reinvented 4 thousands of words in this work, but all the characters are no real meaning, and no one understands. The installation was designed with 3 rolls of the paper written with new invented characters hanged from the ceiling representing the sky, the widely opened books on the ground representing the waves of the sea, the ones displayed around the wall representing the landscape. This work encouraged people to reflect what the huge meaning is behind of the art. It is a way of XuBing to respect the freedom of the art and to protect the use of the language in a creative way. He carved the 4ooo words on the wood and printed them on his work. He strongly disagreed that the art and the language should be used as a political tool which means that it lost the meaning of art and the nature of the language. It became meaningless if the art and language were destroyed or served for political a purpose only which is the core message of the book form the sky.  As it was explained in A Book from the Sky-Xu Bing in International and Area Studies “propaganda the Cultural Revolution this was the context in which he grew up and was educated….artists just made propaganda that anything that embraced subtlety or complexity or anything resemble intellectualism was seen as counter-revolutionary and it had to be destroyed.”( May 10, 2016). As mentioned by the China Online Museum in article of Xu Bing: Book from the Sky: “Xu Bing’s subversion of language calls into examination our faith in the written word and the authority of a book. By disengaging meaningful content from the written form, the artist exposes inherent ways in which language can be both vulnerable and culpable.” (Septem, 28, 2016). It also mentioned by Daniel Szehin Ho, Editor-in-Chief from Randian Magazine: “It is very powerful because you feel the meaning is just within reach and it slips out. It is experiential level. But there is another level for him which is when language has been twisted so you can’t understand anymore. It is a sense of disorientation in truth and the ability to access to the truth.”(Nov 20, 2015)

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Feb. 21, 2015 at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University 10975 S.W. 17th Street, Miami, FL 33199. USA

It can be understood by anyone because it was written with icons he collected. At the beginning, Xu Bing just started a story with very simple symbols of chewing gums, gum paper, and throwing in the garbage. He developed his ideas with more symbols he collected from the world. The symbols and icons they all carry their own value and meanings that people can understand just like languages and cultures. They are existing in the context and preformed. It didn’t set up any limits for their readers. No matter their ethical background, educational background, and cultural background, they all can enjoy the book and stories. The Xu Bing team also developed a system that people can make their own story by typing in English or Chinese, the corresponding icons appearing on the screen become lines, pages and stories. People come from different culture and speak different languages can communicate in non-traditional ways. He states that “even though our lives are completely different from humans thousands of years ago, the words and expressions and language that we used has remained the same. …. We can see there is an attempt to more direct, more visual and easily understood method of communication through the activities of the youth, the activities of large corporations and through the activities of NGOs and chart organizations.” (May 17, 2013). It presents a new cycle of pictographic language which was the origin of Chinese language invented and practiced thousands of years ago. Everything is related and developed within the current context background. Because of the unique character of the Chinese character, Chinese are able to be developed more into a pictographic language. Xu Bing pronounced proudly that “Chinese is only remaining surviving pictographic language” (May 17, 2013).

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December 1, 2012 at Freer Gallery.
1050 Independence Avenue Southwest. Washington, DC 20560. USA

The Living Word, is the English title of this artwork, which in Chinese is called Niao Feile (meaning The bird flew). The artist chooses a totally different name to mark his artwork when it was exhibited in the USA and in China.  The main reason might be in consideration of cultural diversity. To those who cannot understand Chinese characters, he wants them to understand or guess the meaning of the character 鸟 (pronounced niao, meaning bird) according to the shape of each piece, as well as the format of the installation. To those who know Chinese characters, he would love to make them aware that Chinese characters come from pictures.  In another word, the charaters are the perfect production of nature; we can tell the meanings of Chinese characters from the structures, Even people who are strangers to Chinese characters can still understand that the subject of the artwork is the flying bird  As Xu Bing explained, “In the Living Word, the dictionary definition of鸟 is written on the gallery floor in the simplified text created by Mao. The characters鸟 then break away from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters gradually change from the simplified text to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph for ‘bird’” (AAA IN A, 2011).

The artwork is a statement that traces the living source of Chinese characters. The fantastic design of the outline blending with the bold use of brilliant rainbow colors, gives this artwork a mystical fairy-tale quality. This spectacular artwork, hanging from the ceiling of the gallery, looks like an elegant phoenix soaring into the sky. Phoenix is the symbol of revival and survival. As Xu Bing argued, he chose this kind of bird to suggest “escaping the confines of human written definition” (AAA IN A, 2011). Xu Bing seems to have taken unlimited strength from nature itself and its increasing power for freedom. He confidentially and innovatively connects the traditional characters with the modern simplified Chinese characters. He stated,  "My work and my method of thinking have been my search for the living word” (AAA IN A, 2011). The reflection on written form and the nature of meaning has always been the core of Xu Bing’s art.

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August 25, 2013 at the Institute of Electronic Arts School of Alfred University. 1 Saxon Drive Alfred, NY 14802. USA

He demonstrates the meaning of the English words with English alphabets but they are in Chinese character formats which they look like Chinese, but people are able to recognize the English and able to tell the meaning of them. There are no big changes on the alphabets, he adds the strong Chinese stroke into writing English alphabets and turn them into Chinese character looks.

He even set up a classroom with Chinese tables, inks, calligraphy pens, books which contain all the English alphabets in Chinese character formats and instructions on the wall. He promotes this kind of connections between China and West culture. When the students practice they realize that the “Chinese characters” they wrote, they can read them. Emotionally, there are connections between learning and relearning different cultures.

He translates Chinese poems into English and writes into this “New English Calligraphy” which enable western to read Chinese poems themselves.

According to Xu Bing in the Artist talk at MASSMoCA, He explains: “This type of calligraphy is, in fact, two systems of writing and pressing them together. They become lettering or text that looks different on the inside and the outside. Or a type of wiring that is wearing a mask”(MASSMoCA, May 17, 2013).

He also emphases that: “In front of this calligraphy, we don’t have a ready-made conceptual framework for approaching it and reading it. A lot of my works present a barrier to people’s normal ways of thinking, these interruptions, it is like computer dying but then it comes back with more ways of thinking” (May 17, 2013)

He expects that people can have different views and ways to look at cultures even though there are their own individual concepts and systems in different cultures, but it can be possible that two and more systems work together to become recognizable and learnable as long as we make efforts towards it and be open-minded.

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AAA IN A. July 19, 2011. XUBING:  THE LIVING WORD. Retrieved from:  http://www.aaa-a.org/events/phoenixes-and-beyond-a-conversation-with-xu-bing/

Bloomberg. Nov 20, 2015. Intellectual by Nature, Poet at Heart: Xu Bing | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 15. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxHWJjaUDQg&t=851s

China Online Museum. September 28, 2016.  Xu Bing: Book from the Sky. Retrieved from: http://www.comuseum.com/blog/2016/09/28/xu-bing-book-from-the-sky/

International and Area Studies - U of U. May 10, 2016. A Book from the Sky- Xu Bing. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZTfXMQGZHs

MASS MoCA, May 17, 2013. Xu Bing: Artist Talk. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuxXOFga4D0