A reading of the unreadable book: Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky

Abstract

Xu Bing’s installation Book from the Sky (天书 Tianshu) has been the subject of many different interpretations. What does this imposing artwork seek to convey, when its hundreds of books, posters, and scrolls, are full of four thousand invented “characters” that have no literal meaning and cannot even be read? I begin by describing the installation and then proceed to situate it in the time of its inception, China in the 1980s, as it was a product of that decade. Next, I present my interpretation of this artwork, which emphasizes, not sociopolitical aspects, nor influences by Western thinkers or theoretical currents, but its connexion to Chinese culture. Crossing Zen with the specificities of the Chinese script allows me to argue that Tianshu is ultimately about the Chinese script and points towards the visual dimensions of Chinese traditional thought.