Artist’s Talk: Xiaoze Xie on Forbidden Stories

Thursday / September 26, 2019 / 12:15 p.m.
Skillman Library

Xiaoze Xie, Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University, will discuss his exhibit Forbidden Stories, currently on view in Skillman Library through January 2020. A native of Guangdong Province, China, Xie is most recognized for his photorealist paintings and for his photography, sculpture and video exploring themes of censorship, social memory and political discourse. This fall Skillman Library exhibits selections from Xie’s sweeping project entitled Forbidden Memories: Tracing Banned Books in China. “Books are a recurring subject in my work,” Xie writes. “I have been interested in books as a material form of memory, history and ideology, and fascinated by what people do to books.” His work has involved extensive research on book banning in China, throughout which he has amassed personal collections of once-banned titles and documented ancient banned books in library collections through his photography. The Skillman exhibit features Xie’s photographs, painting and personal book collections, alongside Western banned books from our Special Collections.

A concurrent exhibit of Xie’s work, Objects of Evidence, will be on view at the Asia Society Museum in New York City from September 10, 2019 to January 5, 2020.

Free for all! No tickets required.