Tobacco Project 烟草计划系列
2000
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Institution: Duke University, North Carolina
Materials: Various tobacco related materials, medical records, fire.
Commissioned by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, this project focuses on the university's historical connection to Durham's ''tobacco culture'' and its economic ties to the cultivation and sale of tobacco products. It also addresses the related historical issue of the impact on China of the large-scale exportation of tobacco products to that country from the U.S. beginning in the late 19th century. Xu created a series of multi-media installations incorporating the materials, processes and consequences of tobacco manufacture. The works were exhibited in diverse venues throughout the city, including the university's Perkins library, the Durham Tobacco Museum, and an abandoned tobacco manufacturing plant.
A gigantic book created by Xu Bing of text-inscribed tobacco leaves (measuring when opened 1.2 m x 2 m) was gradually devoured by beetles during the course of the exhibition and by the end was effectively reduced to a pile of tobacco dust. For the Tobacco Museum the artist constructed a continuously burning, ten-meter long cigarette laid on top of an open handscroll of the celebrated classical Chinese painting ''Qingming Festival on the River.'' As the cigarette burned away, scorch marks were left on the painting's surface. Two large installations created for the space of the abandoned tobacco plant included a work incorporating a recording of a voice reading the medical records of Xu Bing's father, who had died in a Beijing hospital of lung cancer. In exploring the complex connections between people and tobacco, the project's ultimate exploration is of fundamental issues of human culture.
2000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Institution: Duke University, North Carolina
Materials: Various tobacco related materials, medical records, fire.
Commissioned by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, this project focuses on the university's historical connection to Durham's ''tobacco culture'' and its economic ties to the cultivation and sale of tobacco products. It also addresses the related historical issue of the impact on China of the large-scale exportation of tobacco products to that country from the U.S. beginning in the late 19th century. Xu created a series of multi-media installations incorporating the materials, processes and consequences of tobacco manufacture. The works were exhibited in diverse venues throughout the city, including the university's Perkins library, the Durham Tobacco Museum, and an abandoned tobacco manufacturing plant.
A gigantic book created by Xu Bing of text-inscribed tobacco leaves (measuring when opened 1.2 m x 2 m) was gradually devoured by beetles during the course of the exhibition and by the end was effectively reduced to a pile of tobacco dust. For the Tobacco Museum the artist constructed a continuously burning, ten-meter long cigarette laid on top of an open handscroll of the celebrated classical Chinese painting ''Qingming Festival on the River.'' As the cigarette burned away, scorch marks were left on the painting's surface. Two large installations created for the space of the abandoned tobacco plant included a work incorporating a recording of a voice reading the medical records of Xu Bing's father, who had died in a Beijing hospital of lung cancer. In exploring the complex connections between people and tobacco, the project's ultimate exploration is of fundamental issues of human culture.