Xu Bing, Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?

As part of its Insite: Art + Commemoration program remembering 9/11, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, in conjunction with the Museum of Chinese in America, presents the U.S. debut of Chinese artist Xu Bing's award-winning installation, in which he incorporates dust collected near Ground Zero. Covering the floor of the Spinning Wheel Building gallery with this material, the artist used large letterform templates as a kind of reverse stencil, to inscribe a passage from a Chan Buddhist poem that includes the titular line. A meditation on the boundary that separates the physical from the spiritual, the piece won the $40,000 Artes Mundi Prize when it was shown in the U.K. in 2004.