This piece was well received in China until 1989, whereupon the social and political drama of the Tiananmen Square protests led the government to look askance at Xu Bing's Tianshu. Leaving China in 1991 for the political and artistic freedom of the United States, Xu Bing continued to explore and express his thoughts on deconstructing language to challenge our most "natural" cultural assumptions. His thought-provoking work enticed Western audiences, and he soon became one of the leading artists in the modern Chinese art scene.
