Tobacco Project III: Tobacco Book (2011)
2011
Medium: Tobacco leaves, paper, cardboard, rubber-stamped with passge from A True Discourse on the Present State of Virginia by Ralph Hamor (1615)
Size: 53 3/4 x 39 3/4 x 3 7/8 in.
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011
Tobacco Project III: Puff Choice
2011
Medium: Hinged wooden box with rubber-stamp printing, double cigarettes, foil, and five trade cards by Xu Bing
Size: Box(closed): 7/8 x 7 9/16 x 7 3/16 in.
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011
Tobacco Project III: Match Flower (2011)
2011
Medium: Branches, red match-head paste, vase
Size: Approx. 60 in.
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011Tobacco Project III: Light as Smoke
2011
Medium: 440-lb. compressed block of tobacco with raised text: Light as Smoke
Size: 24 x 43 x 26 in.
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011
Tobacco Project III: Backbone
2011
Medium: Bound book, printed in offset lithography on cigarette paper
Size: 11 1⁄2 x 13 inches, 158 pages
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011
Tobacco Project III: 1st Class
2011
Medium: 500,000 "1st Class" brand cigarettes, adhesive, carpet
Size: Approx 480 x 180 in.
Exhibition: Tobacco project 3, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2011Background Story 7
2011
Materials: Natural debris attached to frosted glass panel, 430 x 200cm
Location: British Museum, London, United Kingdom
Tobacco Project III: Richmond
Location: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA
Medium: Mixed media installation/ Tobacco leaves, live tobacco plants, various tobacco related materials
A site-specific continuation of the Tobacco Project series, a project investigating the long and entangled relationship between human and tobacco.
After executing the project in Durham (2000) and Shanghai (2004), Xu Bing brought it to another important city related to tobacco: Richmond, Virginia, home of Philip Morris and mother company of teh famous Marlboro cigarette brand. During the residency, he studied tobacco's intimate relationship with the American continent and its early immigrant history. In addition to Tobacco Book, Traveling Down the River, 1st Class (another "tiger-skin carpet" composed of over 500,000 "First Class" brand cigarettes), and many works created for the first two phases of Tobacco Project, he expanded his art project on tobacco inlcuding print works. These works raised profound questions about history and reality, global capital, cultural immersion, and labor market.
Selected work description:
Backbone, 2011
It is a book composed of early tobacco brand designs that Xu Bing collected in Virginia. He then asked his friend Rene Balcer, a writer, director, and filmmaker, to write a blues poem incorporating tobacco brand slogans. It is titled Backbone after an early brand of tobacco.
Living Word 3
2011
Materials: Cut and painted acrylic
Location: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA