-017 Xiong Wei
If there is one thing that you can change in a previous project of yours, what would it be?
I would like to share an unrealized project.
In response to the theme of the Socrates Park Annual Fellowship 2025, “Up/rooted,” the proposal for “Ranch America” was submitted in November 2024.
I had mixed feelings about this submission before I sent it out. I was quite excited about the proposal, but somehow I felt there was a strong chance it would be rejected.
The proposal was officially rejected on January 24, 2025.
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“This coming year, Socrates embarks on a multi-year Seawall Reconstruction Project necessitating the relocation of several plant species and pathways to make space for restoration and construction work.
In response, this year’s Fellowship will respond to the theme ‘Up/rooted,’ which explores the complexities of uprooting species for long-term sustainability and resilience. The term ‘uprooted’ evokes the tension between dislocation and resilience. ‘Up’ signifies the act of lifting away, while ‘root’ refers to the hidden systems below the ground—anchoring life and absorbing essential nutrients. This duality invites us to reflect on the implications of relocation and adaptation, exploring how when done thoughtfully it can foster new growth and understanding. In what ways can we foster regeneration while acknowledging and mitigating the losses within our ecological and social landscapes? How might we navigate the delicate balance between ecological preservation and community needs to create a more resilient future?”
Excerpted from the 2025 Socrates Annual Fellowship home page.
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The Proposal
Can you tell the difference between a modern city park and a typical American Ranch?
Combining the concept of the park with the representation of the American spirit found in countless ranches on this land, the American Ranch Project aims to create an artificial outdoor spectacle along the East River. In the heart of human industrial civilization, New York City, the publicly accessible park lawn is taken over by a herd of manmade Texas Longhorn cattle, an immigrant species originally brought to America by Spanish conquistadors, and one of the totems of the American spirit. Not too far from them, a bison observing quietly by the bush.
In this project, the herd and the bison appear in the form of life-sized spring riders, with the bodies of the cows filled with wheat straw—a roughage feed that can be used effectively in beef cow wintering programs. Whole cowhides, a byproduct of ranching, are commonly seen in souvenir shops throughout historical cattle trading towns like Fort Worth, now a tourist town for experience the wild west in Texas. The cowhides are perforated along theirs edges and fitted with leather grommets, then stitched together like body pillows. The lower metal springs, inner structure of the cows, and the horns are all cast and welded from discarded metal tools collected from ranches. Each individual cow in the project is capable of gentle swaying with interaction from viewers.
“A park is an area of natural, semi-natural, or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats.”
I hope to utilize the uniqueness of Socrates Park to realize this project. Discuss us, the human beings, through the images of creatures we tamed. Through the symbolic meaning and setting, this project aims to visually reflect the complex relationships of power, class, immigrants, and the ownership of the land from the old time to the present. At the same time, I seek to explore the role of humanity: seemingly the dominator and meaning-giver, however, who nonetheless cannot escape their place as just one of the species of the natural world.
References and illustrations
About Xiong Wei:
Xiong Wei is a contemporary artist/sculptor based in Brooklyn.
He is interested in the emotional bond and rational relationships among people, between human body and object body, the role of humanity playing as one of the species in our nature. Xiong’s work is concerned with confrontational themes such as violence, mental burden, and the relationship of individualism to collectivism. His sculpture emphasizes the bodily scale, the spectator’s body’s relation with the body of artwork, and the space they coexist. Xiong Wei currently lives and works in New York.
Xiong Wei is a part of the Water Mill Center’s 2026 artist residency.
All images courtesy of Xiong Wei