Must-See Exhibition: Xu Bing's The Phoenix Project

Xu Bing, "The Phoenix Project"

Finally, later in December, Xu Bing’s Phoenix Project will make its US premiere at MASS MoCA’s Building 5, showcasing Xu Bing’s two-year-long endeavor in creating two monumental birds fabricated entirely from materials harvested from construction sites in urban China. Never before seen outside of China, where the works were briefly exhibited outdoors at the Today Art Museum in Beijing and Expo 20120 in Shanghai, the Phoenix Project travels next to MASS MoCA as the centerpiece for a broader Xu Bing exhibition.

Crafted out of demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and remnants of the daily lives of migrant laborers, the Phoenix Project explores the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today’s China. At 12 tons, the male phoenix Feng, measuring 90 feet long, and the female Huang, reaching 100 feet in length, will be suspended mid-air inside the museum’s football field-sized space, illuminating the exhibit and dwarfing visitors as they meander through the installation.

MASS MoCA, Building 5

87 Marshall Street, North Adams, MA 01247