Acrylic characters and paint.

This installation was created for the Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

On the floor of the gallery is written the dictionary definition for "niao", the Chinese word for bird. The "niao" characters break free from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters transform from a standardized Chinese text into the form of the ancient Chinese pictograph based upon a bird's actual appearance. At the topmost point of the installation, the birds appear in their natural form and soar free from words which with humans attempt to catagorize and define them.