Tobacco Art, Beetles Come to Perkins

Exhibit explores how plant is part of our culture, history

Friday, October 27, 2000

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Xu Bing, a Chinese modern artist whose works have received widespread praise in recent years, is creating an installation at Duke University that will feature live beetles consuming books made of cured tobacco leaves.

Xu came to North Carolina in July to conduct research for the exhibit, and for the past three months has been planning it from his home in New York City. He returned to campus Oct. 16 and is preparing to install the work.

The exhibit will be located in the foyer of the William R. Perkins Library on Duke's West Campus. It opens Nov. 3, runs through December and is free to the public.

"Xu Bing is an artist with subtlety, wit and a remarkable ability to produce works of stunning visual beauty, as well as tantalizingly ambiguous meanings," said Stanley Abe, a Duke assistant professor of art history and curator of the exhibit.

"We're excited to have him on campus," Abe continued. "A number of scholars here are interested to see his commentary on the historic connections between China, the Duke family and Duke University."

It is well known that tobacco was the primary source of wealth for the Duke family, until James B. Duke, one of the university's founders, diversified the family investments by focusing on textiles and electrical power in the first half of the 20#th# century.

But in 1881, according to Sherman Cochran, author of Big Business in China (Harvard University Press, 1980), James B. Duke leafed through a world atlas to survey the populations of foreign countries. The cigarette machine had just been invented, and Duke was seeking to open new markets.

He came to the figure 430 million, the population of China, and from that point forward Duke focused on the country in exporting his product, Cochran wrote. By 1902, annual tobacco exports to China had jumped to 1.25 billion cigarettes. They would increase even more over the next quarter century and earn a considerable profit.

Xu (pronounced "shoo") was born in Chongqing, Sichuan province, China, and raised in Beijing. He studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he received a master's of fine arts in 1987. He later taught at Central Academy.

Scholars in the United States and Europe first took notice of Xu in 1989 when an exhibition of his work - and that of other artists - was shut down by the Communist government during a two-week run in Beijing. Xu's contribution to the "China/Avant-Garde" exhibition, as it was titled, included 80-foot scrolls displayed across the gallery ceiling and traditional, hand-bound books spread over a floor. The texts were hand-printed with fake but authentic-looking Chinese characters.

The project, which took Xu more than a year to complete, enraged Chinese authorities, who had trouble reconciling the mixture of intense craftsmanship and conceptual absurdity. Shortly afterward, the Tiananmen Square confrontation broke out and government attempts to silence intellectuals prompted fear among artists.

In 1990, Xu moved to the United States, where for the past decade he has continued his work. Most of his art centers on words, texts and natural objects, and he has been known to use animals in his exhibitions. One of his installations featured silk worms that covered computers and other information-age objects with their spinnings.

Xu has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe and Asia and his art has received numerous accolades. Last year, he was awarded a "genius" grant by the MacArthur Foundation, his most notable acknowledgment so far.

The exhibit at the university's Perkins Library will be sited primarily in the seven glass cases of the foyer gallery. The sealed case at the center of the room will feature large books made of cured tobacco leaves. Tobacco beetles, which live in the leaves, are expected to consume the books during the course of the exhibit.

One other case will contain sheets of cigarette paper with printed text, and rows of cigarettes, also with printed text. Another one or two cases will include books, newspapers and advertisements from Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library. Still another case is expected to include original drawings by Xu evoking advertisements used in China in the early 1900s. Finally, silk-screened prints will cover the floor of the gallery in a pattern intended to represent the columns and overall appearance of a newspaper.

Richard Powell, chair of Duke's department of art and art history, said even though it is not yet installed, Xu's exhibit is already a success in at least one respect.

"A lot of people here feel that contemporary art has been largely neglected as a component of Duke's educational mission," Powell said. "This project demonstrates that, in fact, there is a space on campus for contemporary art and that it can thrive."

Other events have been planned in connection with Xu's installation at Perkins Library. Most notably, two additional exhibits by the artist will be created at the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum, which also will open Nov. 3.

Specifics concerning these two projects have not yet been confirmed, but Xu plans to hold one of the exhibits in a gallery of the museum and one in the homestead pack house, an early 20#th# century wooden structure originally used to sort and store cured tobacco. Both exhibits will be open to the public at no charge.

Also, on Duke's East Campus, a banner that reads "Art for the People," in a distinctive calligraphy developed by Xu, will be hung next to the entrance to Lilly Library. The banner was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City earlier this year.

Taken together, the series of exhibits has been dubbed "The Tobacco Project," and it is being documented through video, still photography, a book and a web site. The photography and video are being produced with the help of the university's Program in Film and Video, and Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.

Several scholars were invited to write essays inspired by the project. Those who agreed to take part are Fredric R. Jameson, William A. Lane, Jr., professor of comparative literature, Duke; Dan Cameron, senior curator, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen distinguished services professor in art history, department of art history,

University of Chicago; Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon professor of the humanities, department of comparative literature, Brown University; and James Elkins, associate professor at the department of art history, theory and criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The essays will be included in the project's web site, http://www.duke.edu/web/cis/tobacco/.

The project is supported by Duke's department of art and art history, the Center for International Studies at Duke, the Institute of the Arts at Duke, the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University Libraries, the Duke University Museum of Art, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Program in Film and Video, and the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum.

Written by Noah Bartolucci.