Xiaoze Xie‘s new exhibition, Flammable Ideas, Fragile Objects, opening on September 15, 2022 in the main second-floor exhibit space at the Stanford East Asia Library, reminds us that, if “knowledge is power,” as the quotation goes, then books can become battlegrounds. For over ten years, Xie has been engaged in an ongoing project titled Forbidden Memories that focuses on the history of banned books in China. Flammable Ideas, Fragile Objects features new works from this project. In addition to books from the artist’s own collections, photographs of premodern banned books, the exhibition will also feature several of Xie’s sculptures. Working with photographs of works contained in public and private collections, Xie has created life-size, hand-sculpted and hand-painted porcelain reproductions of banned books both ancient and modern, some of which will be displayed publicly for the first time in this exhibition.

About the artist:

Xiaoze Xie is an internationally recognized artist and the Paul L. & Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University. Xie has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and internationally. His recent solo exhibitions include “Objects of Evidence” at the Asia Society Museum in New York City (2019-20) and “Eyes On” at the Denver Art Museum (2017-18). His work is in the permanent collection of such institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. Xie received the Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2013) and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2003).