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 collection, the exhibition will also feature several of Xie's sculptures. Working with photographs of books 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.

Flammable Ideas, Fragile Objects will be on view from September 15, 2022, through the end of Fall Quarter. An opening reception will be held on October 12, 2022, in the East Asia Library, room 224.

Xiaoze Xie, the Paul L. & Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University, is an internationally recognized artist who has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad. His work is in the permanent collection of such institutions as the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, San Jose Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and Oakland Museum of California. Xie received the Asia Game Changer West Award from the Asia Society (2022), the Painter and Sculptor's Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2013), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2003) and artist awards from Phoenix Art Museum (1999) and Dallas Museum of Art (1996).