St John the Divine 2014

**Phoenix: Xu Bing at the Cathedral
On view through 2014
Over the course of two years, pioneering Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing culled detritus from construction sites across the rapidly changing urban landscape of Beijing, and transformed it into his most monumental project to date: Phoenix (2008-10). A feat of engineering and ingenuity,Phoenix is composed of two birds, a male called Feng and a female calledHuang. Feng and Huang—together weighing 12 tons and measuring 90 and 100 feet long, respectively—are now on view at the Cathedral. They hang suspended in the Nave, two majestic birds in perpetual flight beneath its celestial ceiling.***