It’s been several months since Chinese conceptual artist Xu Bing orchestrated the monumental task of suspending a pair of 12 ton birds into the nave of one of New York City’s most famous cathedrals. Fashioned from salvaged construction debris from Beijing’s World Financial Center, the phoenix pair is reminiscent of the more 2-dimensional work of Brazilian artist Vik Muniz in both philosophy and meticulously layered execution.
Throughout China’s history, every dynasty has had its form of phoenixes. Representing luck, unity, power and prosperity, these mythological birds have, for the most part, been benevolent, gentle creatures. But this pair, fashioned from the materials of commercial development, reflect the grimmer and grittier face of China today.
“They bear countless scars,” Mr. Xu explained, having “lived through great hardship, but still have self-respect. In general, the phoenix expresses unrealized hopes and dreams.”
The project started in 2008, when he was asked to create a sculpture for a glass atrium at the base of a new building designed by the architect Cesar Pelli for the World Financial Center in Beijing’s central business district.
“When I first visited the building site, I had a sense of shock,” Mr. Xu recalled in an interview at a coffee shop near St. John the Divine. “It was impossible to imagine that with all the modern technology today, the building was constructed with such low-tech methods.”
The poor working conditions for the migrant laborers who were building such luxury towers, he said, “made my skin quiver.” Mr. Xu had such a violent reaction to what he saw that he decided to make the phoenixes rise, as it were, out of debris and workers’ tools that he salvaged from the construction site.
That was just a few months before the financial crisis of 2008. It was also when there was a government ban on all trucking and construction to ensure cleaner air during the Beijing Olympics. The building’s developers, afraid that the birds carried a message about waste, asked Mr. Xu if they could be gussied up, perhaps with a crystalline exterior.
He declined, and, in the end, the developers rejected his birds. But Mr. Xu was determined to forge ahead. He had them constructed at a factory on the outskirts of Beijing, where they were to have taken take four months to complete. Instead, the process took two years, with Mr. Xu working from drawings, models and computer-generated diagrams. While they may appear to have the naïve quality of Chinese folk art, every inch — from beak to tail feather — was carefully considered….
Their appearance in New York is not their first public outing. They were on view twice in Asia, in front of the Today Art Museum in Beijing and at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
Judith Goldman, a writer and independent curator, saw the phoenixes at the factory in Beijing and decided they should be shown in the United States. “Xu Bing’s junkyard creatures resonate with many meanings, and I thought no place would be more fitting than the cathedral’s great nave,” she said, and she contacted the cathedral.
The Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, the dean of St. John the Divine, said that throughout its history, the church has used art, performances and talks to “create a discourse.” He called Mr. Xu “a global citizen who sees from this debris the human condition.”
“This beautiful, even sacred installation has transformational powers,” Dean Kowlaski went on. “This is not just a critique about laborers in China, it is about a subject that affects us all. It’s about fair pay and human wages for all people.”
Before coming to New York, the birds made a stop at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, where they were on view in a converted factory building for nearly a year, starting in 2012.
When they were at that museum, “what I found so interesting was that it almost seemed as though they were returning to their ancestral home,” Mr. Xu said, explaining that North Adams had been a 19th-century industrial center that fell victim to economic hardship.
Click here for the full article. The fabulous timelapse of the installation is well worth the viewing time.
Organikos 