Xu Bing

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Xu Bing, Square Calligraphy Classroom American Silkworm Series Part 1 A Case Study of Transference Parrot Cultural Animal (1994)

Xu Bing’s art plays with Eastern and Western language conventions to subtly and overtly comment about the frailty and significance of linguistic communication to understand cultures and perspectives that differ from our own. Recently I watched a documentary by a Filipino undocumented immigrant in the United States called White People. During one scene he interviewed a 2nd generation Italian-American family that remained in an area in New York that historically was predominantly an Italian community, but today a large number of Chinese immigrants reside in the community. The interviewer uncovered racial tensions based on linguistic differences, but when the elder generation that immigrated to America from Italy talked about their experiences as the “other” because they didn’t speak the language suddenly everyone in the family made the connection to their recent neighbors that also didn’t speak the language, yet. This type of linguistic narrative, which is an all too common narrative of the American experience, comes to mind when I look at Xu Bing’s piece. I’m recommending the artist Xu Bing’s website as a resource for students to interact with this piece in particular, as well as his complete biography, body of work, exhibitions, projects, and publications about the artist such as reviews and criticisms (though they read more like favorable commentary) and interviews. If your school has technology such as one to one iPads or laptops/computers, then this website would be beneficial for students to interact with the resources on the artist’s website. I have chosen this piece as one in a series of narrative pieces from around the world (both art and literature) representing different cultures and languages as part of a unit that examines the narrative genre and experiences with language inequality, particularly the feelings associated with assimilation. Subtopics of this overall thematic focus is the bilingual or multilingual experience and codeswitching. [font='Times New Roman']Xu Bing’s work overall expresses this sentiment that I explore with my students in my first unit of the school year.[/font]

http://www.xubing.com
http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/about
http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1994/square_calligraphy_classroom
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/xu-bing
edited by lbernard on 8/11/2015
edited by lbernard on 8/11/2015

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