Just outside this year’s Venice Biennale someone has welded themselves inside an iron box.
Fortunately, the box is equipped with waterproof LED TVs connected to two internal cameras.

Xing Xin, a Chinese artist, will be occupying a sealed metal box for the next 49 days in protest of China’s one child per couple policy. The box is 90 cm wide and 9 cm high, and is fully equipped for feeding and the relieving of bodily functions.  Xin will only be let out of the box once he has finished counting each Chinese character in the 150-part set of “The Textbooks of Nine-Year Compulsory Education.”

Xin will be on public view for the next 49 days (or more, if he doesn’t finish counting in time) just outside the future home of the Spazio Berengo, a new museum dedicated exclusively to “contemporary glass art.” Adriano Berengo, director of the new museum, is the main sponsor. With Berengo’s continued sponsorship, the artist plans to repeat the demonstration in a second box made of glass.

Xing Xin said of this demonstration, “Maybe because of the loneliness in my deep heart, I want to tell something. Or maybe because I am the only child, I want to show off my uniqueness.”