Xu Bing grew up in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China. His parents both worked at Peking University. His father was head of the History Department, and his mother was a researcher in the Department of Library Science. Xu’s father taught him calligraphy and Chinese history; he spent hours with his mother reading in the library and painting. Under Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) his father was sent to the countryside for re-education. To remain in school Xu was required to make propaganda banners. Mao wrote that it was “very necessary for educated youths to go to the countryside and learn from poor and lower-middle-class peasants.” Xu was sent for re-education in 1975. He worked at hard manual labor, but he states he learned humility and found calm. His talent in calligraphy was recognized and he was highly recommended for admission in 1976 to the May Seventh College of Art in Beijing. Although he hoped for a career in painting, he was assigned to the department of printmaking. He graduated in 1987 with an MFA in printmaking.
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao modified the Chinese language for the purpose of propaganda. Xu’s interest in languages and calligraphy, the propaganda banners he made, and the language changes he observed, inform a major part of his art. “It allowed me to see the changes in the Chinese language and the style of Chinese characters. At that point, I realized the style of these characters actually contained deep political messages.”

Book from the Sky” (1991 installation)

“Book from the Sky” (1987-1991) is an installation of four hand printed books and of scrolls printed with wood letterpress type that covers the floor, ceiling and walls of the exhibition space. Xu invented the 4000 glyphs and pseudo-characters that appear to be traditional Chinese characters, but they are not. He expanded “Book from the Sky” over the years from 1987 until 1991, and it has varied dimensions depending on its size location. After Mao modified the Chinese language, Xu’s use of his characters and text question the meaning of language. The work is complex and confusing but somehow familiar. In Chinese the title is “Fenxi Shijie de Shu” (A book that analyses the world). As in English, it is read from left to right and top to bottom. This work was not shown again in China for twenty years.

Phoenix Project” (2014) Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City

In 2008, Xu was commissioned by Lee Shau-kee, a Hong Kong real estate tycoon, and Cesar Pelli, the building designer, to create a magnificent sculpture to be placed in the atrium of the World Finance Center (Fortune Towers) which was being constructed in Beijing. They asked for a large crystalline phoenix. Xu’s first reaction when visiting the site: “It was impossible to image that with all the modern technology today, the building was constructed with such low-tech methods.” Most of the workers were migrant laborers who lived in nearby housing provided for them. He was appalled that workers living in squalor were building luxury towers. It “made your skin quiver.” Xu essentially refused to make the glittery sculpture he knew they expected; instead he created “Phoenix Project” (2008-2010) using recycled construction materials. Xu encouraged the constructions workers to gather debris from the building site and from several other construction sites in urban China. His choice of construction debris was intended to call attention to contemporary issues “including the rapid industrialization of the rural geography, and increasingly throwaway culture, and a lack of value for manual laborers.”

Phoenix Project” (2014), Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York City

The phoenix is a significant, ancient Chinese symbol and Xu’s work displays a pair of phoenix with respect to historical representation of phoenixes that are often shown as a pair. The sculpted male, Feng, is 90 feet long. The female, Huang, is 100 feet long. Their combined weight is 120 tons and they hang 20 feet in the air. Junjii Jiang in an article published for Harvard University Press provides a specific description of the work. “Xu Bing translated the organic components of the bird into industrial ones, and while reinventing the bird’s design, he followed carefully the logic of each part. The hardhats form the comb because they are red and worn on top. The concrete mixer is the stomach because the two share a function of stirring and blending. The heads of both the male feng and the female huang are made from the nose of industrial jackhammers, a contemporary translation of their strength and ferocity (historical images of the phoenix often show the powerful bird with a snake in its talons or beak). The shovels apparently make good claws. A spade becomes a piece of feather because the handle’s function resembles that of the quill. The impellers are on the long tail feathers due to their relation to aerodynamics. Thus the phoenixes are by no means a haphazard assemblage of used materials; rather, the design is careful and thoughtful, and the logic of assemblage follows the anatomical structure of a bird and makes the piece a well integrated whole.” The phoenix sculptures are strung with thousand of lights to illuminate the works at night.

Phoenix Project”, detail

The phoenix first appeared in 2600 B.C.E. under Emperor Hung, and it is one of four mythical celestial beings. The Phoenix is immortal. At the end of its life it burns; like the fire it is both generative and destructive. It sacrifices itself for a significant purpose, and then is resurrected. Phoenixes are found in several ancient religions from Egypt to Rome, and from Mesopotamia to India. Phoenixes were found in the Garden of Eden, and Christianity they represent the resurrection of Christ. Not to forget Fawkes in Harry Potter. In each case they are beneficent forces representing resurrection.

The sculpture was interpreted correctly as critical of the Communist Chinese government and was disparaged in the press. The commissioners agreed to accept the work if Xu beautified it. Xu refused. Therefore the ownership of the work was in doubt until Barry Lam, a billionaire art patron in Taiwan, purchased it. The “Phoenix Project “ has traveled from the Shanghai World Expo (2010), to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2013), to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City (2014), and to the Venice Biennale (2015), where they were suspended over the Grand Canal.

“Tobacco Project” (2011)

Xu Bing’s “Phoenix Project” was a departure from the use of text by the artist. The “Tobacco Project” was another such departure. He accepted an invitation to lecture and serve as artist-in-residence at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Durham, known as “tobacco town”, is also the home of the Duke Medical Center, a major research center for cancer. As a result of his father’s death after a long struggle with lung cancer of lung cancer, Xu researched the history, cultivation, culture clashes, trade routes, manufacture, and medical aspects of tobacco use. He turned tobacco and cigarettes into works of art. The first exhibition was in Durham (2000), the second in Shanghai (2004) and the third in Richmond, Virginia (2011). After a two week residency in Richmond, the resulting exhibition included several of his earlier tobacco related works and culminated with a piece composed of 500,000 cigarettes, some standing on the tip and others on the filter. Following Xu’s template, a group of students produced a dazzling and massive tiger skin rug. Xu’s Chinese heritage meets modern Chinese culture; tiger skin rugs are a major status symbol in China.After leaving China in 1990, with several other contemporary artists in reaction to the Communist crack down due to Tiananmen Square demonstration (1989), Xu moved to the United States, at the invitation of University of Wisconsin, Madison. He lived there and later in New York City producing work and lecturing internationally. In 2008, Xu Bing was invited to return to China to serve as the Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the former May Seventh College of Art in Beijing. He was appointed President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. Xu continues to create art, to teach and lecture internationally. Xu Bing is considered to be one of China’s foremost contemporary artists

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Much has been said lately about conversations we need to have about race relations in America. But the necessity for such exchanges long precedes the current Black Lives Matter movement. As a Made in Maryland feature documentary vividly demonstrates in a highlight of the 13th Chesapeake Film Festival, the races in the city of Cambridge, which is hardly an exception in these United States, have talked past each other for generations.

You Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘Bout Groove City is many things. In part, it is a one-sided reminiscence about the heyday of Cambridge as, at first, an out-of-town stopover for some of the greatest names from the Harlem Renaissance, and later as a hotbed in the emergence of hip-hop as the successor to rock and roll as the predominant pop music genre. But more than that, the documentary, directed by Cesar Gonzalez, pastor of Cambridge’s Seventh Day Adventist Church, traces Dorchester County’s racial and civil rights history all the way back to Harriet Tubman. 

The festival, encompassing 45 films chosen from more than 200 submitted, will be streamed live for free from Oct. 1-4, with preview trailers available for sampling starting Sept. 1. All you have to do to tap into this virtual festival is choose which films you want to see, pop your own popcorn, turn out the lights, sit back and see something you’re unlikely to find elsewhere on the internet.

You Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘Bout Groove City opens with Cambridge residents—a tourism director and the city’s first black mayor, as well as local historians and hip-hop impresarios—people separated not only by race but by generations, recalling what it was like back in the day. The elders remember what they view now as the good old days in the 1940s, when Cambridge was still bustling as the Eastern Shore’s only deep port. Though they lived separately, the races had their own services run by businessmen and entrepreneurs. The schools were strictly segregated, but we’re told, one could still get a good education at all-black public schools.

Because of more overt racism in other parts of what was regarded as the deep South, big names from Harlem—Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald—made appearances in Cambridge. Later, such stars as James Brown, Little Richard, and Lloyd Price brought a different soul vibe to entertainment venues in the city’s middle-class African-American Pine Street neighborhood and across town. 

But in the 1950s, with a downturn and eventual closure of the Phillips crab-picking plant, the black community was hit disproportionally hard. Unemployment simmered for years before the 1960s civil rights protests culminated in a riot that led to a fire destroying much of Pine Street. (The name of the accused riot instigator, H. Rap Brown, isn’t mentioned in the documentary.)

“Pine Street, the other downtown and onetime stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit burns to the ground,” says director Gonzalez. “And less than ten years later, they come up with Groove City.”

That’s when Cambridge’s African-American entertainment heritage re-emerged as rap, blossoming into hip-hop. Artists from the local scene were in demand all over the Delmarva Peninsula and as far north as New York City and south as Atlanta. Extensive interviews with such current-day activists as Dion Banks of the Eastern Shore Network for Change, as well DJ Mike Bryan and musicians who led the Groove Street movement, paint a living history all but unknown to white residents interviewed for this documentary. Groove City was a foreign language to whites who lived mostly on the east side of Race Street. Amanda Fenstermaker, Dorchester’s Director of Tourism, doesn’t have any memories of Groove City. “I heard about it when I became tourism director,” she says. “But growing up, I don’t remember it.” To her and other white people interviewed in the film, Groove City, at that time, may as well have been from another planet as opposed to the next block over from Race Street.

The demarcation between the races is the yellow stripe down Race Street—the “third rail” as described by longtime resident Mike Starling—though the street name has nothing to do with race. Long ago, races regularly were held on that stretch of downtown Cambridge. 

“You can see homes here that still have outbuildings that were slave quarters,” says Gonzalez. Slaves were once auctioned at a small pavilion next to the courthouse, now a bandstand. 

The juxtaposition of party music and dance competitions so prevalent along Pine Street against the racial history of the region becomes jarring when the subject turns to the mural featuring Harriet Tubman on the U.S. 50 side of the Cambridge Visitors Center. The muralist who created the image, Michael Rosato, says in a vast understatement, “Not everybody who drives by feels the same way.” 

As Banks recalls, a white person said of the mural, “‘Harriet Tubman was a thief. She stole other people’s property.’” 

Tubman rescued dozens of slaves from Dorchester—”stole” them, if you will. If that’s what you believe, then tell me, instead, who stole your soul? Yes, we need more conversation. But don’t bring your hate to the table.

Trailers available for preview Sept. 1, free streaming of all films Oct. 1-4 on chesapeakefilmfestival.org

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.