Tehching Hsieh

Tehching Hsieh was born on December 31st, 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. His father, Ching Hsieh, was an atheist, and his mother, Su-Choung Hong, a devoted Christian. Hsieh dropped out from high school in 1967 and took up painting. After finishing his army service (1970-1973) Hsieh had his first solo show at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taiwan. Shortly after this show, Hsieh stopped painting. He made a performance action "Jump Piece" in which he broke both of his ankles. He trained as a sailor, which he then used as a means to enter the United States. In July of 1974, Hsieh finally arrived at the port of a small town near the Delaware River in Philadelphia. He was an illegal immigrant for fourteen years until granted amnesty in the US in 1988.

Starting from the late 1970s, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a Thirteen-year Plan, inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. The first four One Year Performances made Hsieh a regular name in the art scene in New York; the last two pieces, in which he intentionally retreated from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibility.

Since the Millennium, released from the restriction of not showing his works during the thirteen-year period, Hsieh has exhibited his work in North and South America, Asia and Europe. Elements from Hsieh's Cage Piece, including the cage itself, were shown in 2009 to great critical acclaim at the Museum of Modern Art in Performance 1: Tehching Hsieh, the museum's inaugural exhibition in an ongoing series on performance. Time Clock Piece was included in the major exhibition, The Third Mind: Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, at the Guggenheim Museum in the spring of 2009. In 2010, Hsieh was included in both the Liverpool Biennial in the United Kingdom and the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea. Hsieh and his wife, Qinqin Li, now live in Brooklyn.