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The recent work of Guangdong-born artist Xiaoze Xie pertinently, alarmingly mirrors current headlines. Both timely and urgent, it is merely the tip of similarly themed projects that have consumed Xie for decades, centered on the crucial role of books as the guardians of free expression and the repositories of civilization’s accumulated knowledge. At the heart of this ambitious and singular practice (it’s a conception of protest art that is not only politically pointed but also pictorially elegant) are two series of works, the “Library,” which he began in 1993, soon after he arrived in America, and the “Chinese Library” which he started in 1995, both ongoing. They depict books, often in rare editions, that represent the wisdom of multiple cultures and countries, discovered in libraries and other institutional archives without emphasis on the specific content. The latter, however, led to “Forbidden Memories: Tracing Banned Books in China” in 2012, a project that named names, focusing on books that have been banned in China, a prohibition that has been on the rise globally in recent years, including in the United State, despite First Amendment guarantees.
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“In the Name of the Book,” Xie’s first solo in New York since 2019-2020, consists of oils from the two Library series. The books—both Western and Chinese, some classics, others obscure, with their respective types of binding and casings, usually displayed upright or on their sides—are more painterly than might be expected, enclosed in their own (often unknowable) histories, haloed by the patina of time.
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Xie passionately wants to recoup whatever he can of that loss, a quest that can be increasingly challenging when dealing with authoritarian regimes in an age of expansive, constant surveillance.
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Śūraṅgama Sūtra, 2025
Porcelain, unglazed
12 3/8 x 11 7/8 x 3/4 in
31.4 x 30.2 x 1.9 cm
Edition variable 3/3 -
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Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Books Series: The Golden Lotus (Voyeurism); Banned as an obscene book in the 7th year of Qing Emperor Tongzhi’s reign (1868), 2019Porcelain, unglazed12 1/4 x 17 1/4 x 1 3/4 in
31.1 x 43.8 x 4.4 cm -
Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Books Series: Qian Qianyi. Śūraṅgama Sūtra. Banned in 1770s during the Qianlong Reign/Qing Dynasty., 2025Porcelain, unglazed12 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 1 1/2 in
31.8 x 29.2 x 3.8 cm
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"Over the last 2,000 years, the books that have disappeared in China because of prohibition are countless. There is no trace of them anymore, all I have found is a small fraction. All of these old paper stacks, these silent books, consist of thoughts and discourses. These invisible and shapeless things and the stories behind them - thecomplicated contexts of philosophical, religious, political, historical, social, ethical and racial issues - are gone. The history of banning books is a process of challenging repeated oppression and control, and challenging it again. It is alongside this back-and-forth repetition, I think, that history slowly marches on." - Xiaoze Xie
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The exhibition’s surprise are his newest endeavors: hand-made and hand-painted, cunningly rendered, to-scale porcelain sculptures, both glazed and unglazed. Xie compares the process of firing in porcelain to the burning of books, stating that “after high-firing, the sculptures in the form of books become hard, solid and seemingly strong and durable, but at the same time very fragile – just like culture.”
They grew out of the “Forbidden Books” project, begun in 2016 when Xie was at Jingdezhen, the world famous porcelain center, and are faithful replications—including the wonderful illustrations accompanying the text—of volumes that were once prohibited and now rehabilitated, such as The Golden Lotus (Voyeurism), 2019 (Jin Ping Mei in Chinese), banned multiple times for its explicitly erotic content since it first appeared in the 16th century. One detail that Xie points out is the white edges that peek out from some of these porcelain books. They represent slips of fresh paper that have been inserted between the aged leaves as safeguards. When the reader turns the pages, the original is not touched, reminding us that time also ravages.
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Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Books Series: The Peony Pavilion (Diagnose evil spirits); Banned in the 24th year of Qing Emperor Daoguang’s reign and the 7th year of Qing Emperor Tongzhi’s reign as an obscene book, 2024Porcelain, painted in underglaze blue, two elements10 7/8 x 11 7/8 x 3/4 in
27.6 x 30.2 x 1.9 cm -
Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Book Series: Water Margin; Banned in the 24th year of Qing Emperor Daoguang’s reign and the 7th year of Qing Emperor Tongzhi’s reign as an obscene book, 2025Porcelain, painted in underglaze blue, two elements8 x 10 1/2 x 1 1/2 in
20.3 x 26.7 x 3.8 cm -
Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Books Series: The Peony Pavilion (Coming Back to Life), 2025Porcelain, painted in underglaze blue, two elements10 1/2 x 14 x 1 1/2 in
26.7 x 35.6 x 3.8 cm -
Xiaoze XieThe Forbidden Books Series: Chuan Shan Posthumous Papers.Banned for a long period during the Qing dynasty;, 2019Porcelain, painted in underglaze blue11 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 1 1/2 in
29.2 x 29.2 x 3.8 cm
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