Xu Bing: Tobacco Project explores the production and culture of tobacco as seen through the eyes of one of China’s most innovative contemporary artists.
Xu Bing uses tobacco—as a material and a subject—to explore a wide range of issues, from global trade and exploitation to the ironies of advertising a potentially harmful substance. As a print- and bookmaker, he is especially fascinated by the visual culture of packaging and marketing tobacco. When Duke University invited Xu Bing to be the artist in residence in 2000, he was drawn into the history of the Duke family, which led to his first Tobacco Project. He followed that with a second Tobacco Project in Shanghai in 2004. He sees the Virginia Tobacco Project as the third in a trilogy.
His research in Virginia included a tour of the Philip Morris manufacturing center in Richmond—one of the largest cigarette production facility in the world—and trips to the Southside region of Virginia to see an historic tobacco warehouse and several family-owned tobacco farms. He also did research at the Virginia Historical Society and the Valentine Richmond History Center.
In this collage (best seen with the magnifier) you can see 2 views of an astounding piece. Working with former graduate students from Virginia Commonwealth University’s highly regarded School of the Arts, he also created the template for a large installation piece that forms the climax of the exhibition: a tiger-skin-pattern rug made from over half a million cigarettes standing on end, with either filter or tip up to make an alternating pattern of orange and white. Notice how the colors change, depending on the direction from which you view the "tiger skin."
The Mummy may be the more heavily promoted exhibit at the museum but this project was equally astonishing.
hmm allison, tobacco as art...........i don't think i could ever get excited about tobacco...it is an awful drug !!!! Nice collage, bad subject (am I being too sensitive?)
@phil_howcroft And the exhibition rooms were permeated with the smell of tobacco. It was quite unsettling since you are forbidden by law to smoke in any public building!
That's pretty amazing as far as the artwork goes. I'm always caught in between with this. I know smoking probably shortened my mother's life in someways, that it is addicting, and very unhealthy. At the same time, I recognize that there is a whole economy built around this industry and if you destroy it, you destroy a lot of families in the process. So it's interesting that this artist is taking all that into account. Well done collage!
