Tehching Hsieh

I first Saw Hsieh's work in 2009 while I was in NYC. The exhibit at the MoMA, deemed a performance piece, I believe expanded upon the sometimes artificiality of performance art. Hsieh very much was an artist with a cause, and in my mind, that cause as the illumination of grief and different levels of hardship. In 2009 the MoMA displayed a wooden cage like the one which Hsieh had spent a year doing nothing but photographing himself once each day. Around the rest of the space were the photographs of Hsieh from the 1979 confinement he put himself in. (I do have my own photographs (somewhere) of the exhibit)

Courtesy of the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/arts/design/19perf.html?_r=1)

I bring up Hsieh now because I think his purpose in art is a noble one. His work does not come off, like a lot of performance pieces (not just as artificial as I have mentioned but also) as selfish with a little bit of finger wagging to its audience. For the Talent Show Exhibit now up at P.S. 1 (until April 4th) Hsieh had but one image: of a poster he made in 1978 advertising his illegal status where he encouraged people to turn him into the proper authorities if they saw him. Here Hsieh was not promoting his own interests, but commenting on both insignificance and status. An illegal immigrant seems to represents only a shadow- someone whom would be disposed of if properly searched for, but at what cost is a government and its citizens willing to pay, especially when an illegal immigrant has no legal income, or is barely scraping by, far from being noticed.

To make a long story short, I found it most interesting that Hsieh has stopped considering himself an artist. His works seem to stem from the deepest depths of personal grievances. I am incredibly interested to find out how someone can tap into making work from pain and injustice without raising a hand in protest. Or, is Hsieh a quiet protester?