Casting the Void: Reinvention of the Library Cave in Dunhuang

Presentation by Xiaoze Xie, with an introduction by Richard Vinograd, Christensen Fund Professor of Asian Art, Stanford University. Followed by a fireside chat with Dr. Yu Hu, Executive Dean, Tsinghua Institution for Culture and Creativity, Professor & Administrative Dean of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua Universtiy.  

Light refreshments will be served from 5:00 pm.

Xiaoze Xie will present his work-in-progress made during his artist residency in the summer of 2017 at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, a historic site of Buddhist art on China's Silk Road. Xie's research-based project focuses on Cave 17, or the Library Cave, once a depository of manuscripts, scrolls, paintings and textiles dating from the 4th to the 11th century. The relics from the cave were bought, stolen and fragmented since the cave was discovered in 1900, and are now dispersed in collections around the world. Xie's long scroll of brush and ink drawings combines diagrams, calligraphy, and quoted images to cast his imaginations of the now empty cave, and to confront its history of loss, absence, and trauma. A work in its own right, the scroll also serves as a proposal for contemporary sculptures/installations to be realized in the future. 

Xiaoze Xie is the Paul L. & Phyllis Wattis Professor in Art at Stanford. He has exhibited extensively in the US and Asia. His work is in the permanent collection of such institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, San Jose Museum of Art and Oakland Museum of California. Xie received the Painter and Sculptor’s Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and artist awards from Phoenix Art Museum and Dallas Museum of Art. "Eyes On: Xiaoze Xie" at the Denver Art Museum is on view through July 8, 2018.

Richard Vinograd is the Christensen Fund Professor in Asian Art at Stanford. He is the author of Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900; co-author of Chinese Art & Culture.

Co-sponsored by the Tsinghua Institute of Culture and Creativity, and the Dunhuang Foundation

Image: Xiaoze Xie's work-in-progress at the Dunhuang Academy, 2017

VISITOR INFORMATION: Oshman Hall is located in the McMurtry Building on Stanford’s campus, at 355 Roth Way. next to Cantor Museum's Rodin Sculpture Garden. Visitor parking is free after 4pm on weekdays, except by the oval. (free parking structure right next to McMurtry Building at the intersection of Campus Drive and Roth way). Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle.