Editing Xu Bing (section)

==Biography==
Born in Chongqing in 1955, Xu grew up in [[Beijing]]. His father was the head of the history department at [[Peking University]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Tianyi |first=Wen |title=Dragonfly Eyes |url=http://newschinamag.com/newschina/articleDetail.do?article_id=291&section_id=4&magazine_id=5 |work=NewsChina |date=April 2016}}</ref> In 1975, near the end of the [[Cultural Revolution]], he was [[Sent-down youth|relocated to the countryside]]. Returning to Beijing in 1977, he enrolled at the [[Central Academy of Fine Arts]] (CAFA) in Beijing, where he joined the printmaking department and also worked during a short period of time as a teacher, receiving his master's degree in Fine Art in 1987. After the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests]], his recent work came under scrutiny from the government and received harsh criticism for what was perceived as a critique of the Chinese government. Due to the political pressure and artistic restrictions of the post-Tiananmen period in China, Xu moved to the United States in 1990 where he was invited by the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]]. He then resided to the United States until his appointment as vice-president of the Beijing CAFA in 2008.

In 1990–91, Xu had his first exhibition in the United States at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]]'s Elvehjem Museum of Art (now [[Chazen Museum of Art]]) including his installations ''[[A Book from the Sky]]'' and ''Ghosts Pounding the Wall''. In ''Book from the Sky'', the artist invented 4,000 characters and hand-carved them into wood blocks, then used them as [[movable type]] to print volumes and scrolls, which are displayed laid out on the floor and hung from the ceiling. The vast planes of text seem to convey ancient wisdom, but are in fact unintelligible. ''The Glassy Surface of a Lake'', a site-specific installation for the Elvehjem, was on view in 2004–05. In this work, a net of cast aluminum letters forming a passage from [[Henry David Thoreau]]'s ''[[Walden]]'' stretches across the museum's atrium and pours down into an illegible pile of letters on the floor below.

Working in a wide range of media, Xu creates installations that question the idea of communicating meaning through language, demonstrating how both meanings and written words can be easily manipulated. He received a [[MacArthur Foundation]] grant in July 1999, presented to him for "originality, creativity, self-direction, and capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in [[printmaking]] and [[calligraphy]]."

In 2003 he exhibited at the then new Chinese Arts centre in Manchester, and in 2004 he won the inaugural "Artes Mundi" prize in Wales for ''Where does the dust collect itself?'', an installation using dust he collected in [[New York City]] on the day after the destruction of the [[World Trade Center (1973–2001)|World Trade Center]].<ref>{{Cite news  |last=Kennedy |first=Maev |title=Artist finds peace in Ground Zero |newspaper=Guardian |date=2004-02-05 |url =http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1141093,00.html |access-date=2007-05-21}}</ref> He won also a half year of free work and study at the [[American Academy in Berlin]] 2004.<ref name="AmAcad04">{{cite web |url=http://www.americanacademy.de/home/person/xu-bing |title=Coca-Cola Fellow, Class of Spring 2004 |publisher=American Academy in Berlin |access-date=March 11, 2012}}</ref>

Xu was appointed the new vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, March 2008.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Wang |first1=Yanjuan |last2=Chen |first2=Wen |title=Playing With the Artistry of Language |url=http://www.bjreview.com.cn/culture/txt/2008-01/09/content_95865.htm |work=[[Beijing Review]] |date=9 January 2008 |access-date=16 October 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Barboza |first=David |title=Schooling the Artists' Republic of China |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/arts/design/30barb.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=30 March 2008 |access-date=16 October 2009}}</ref>