After a lifetime of extreme, little-known performances, 58-year-old Tehching Hsieh is suddenly in the spotlight. In 1978, four years after immigrating to the United States from Taiwan, his existential despair at immigrant life inspired his first performance work, “Cage Piece.” Hsieh built a cage in a loft apartment, shaved his head, donned a white uniform and spent the next year alone in captivity. Other year-long performances followed, such as “the year he punched a time-clock hourly, the year he lived on the streets, the year he spent tethered by a rope to a female artist.” Now, Hsieh has a one-man show at the MoMA , an exhibit at the Guggenheim, a forthcoming book Out of Now that chronicles his body of work, and his first grant from the United States Artists. Deborah Sontag’s New York Times profile of Hsieh tells his incredible story.
