Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
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Books & the Arts
/ March 11, 2026
Stop Making Sense
The extreme performance art of Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
In his performances, he questioned whether or not an artwork needed to supply a specific meaning in order to generate a feeling.
Jillian Steinhauer
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One Year Performance 1978–1979.(Claire Fergusson)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue.
On September 30, 1978, the performance artist Tehching Hsieh had himself locked inside a jail cell he’d built in his studio in lower Manhattan. The space was surrounded by wooden bars and measured just over 100 square feet; it contained a cot, a sink, a mirror, a pail, and a single bare light bulb on one wall. A friend brought Hsieh food and emptied the pail that he used as a toilet. For an entire year, Hsieh did not talk, read, write, listen to music, or watch TV. He thought and paced, slept and ate; he washed his hands and brushed his teeth. Each day, he marked the passage of time by having his photograph taken and carving a single mark into the wall with his nail clippers. On September 29, 1979, he was released.
One Year Performance 1978–1979—or Cage Piece, as it’s more commonly known —was neither Hsieh’s first artwork nor his first performance. But it signaled the start of a period in which he subjected himself to several yearlong feats of endurance in the name of art: After the cage, he would go on to punch a time clock literally once every hour, live outside on the streets of New York City, and tie himself, 24/7, to another artist, Linda Montano. All of these pieces were shaped by strict rules and meticulously documented. Together, they started to bring Hsieh, who was then an undocumented immigrant from Taiwan, into the avant-garde art world of New York—albeit at a remove, since he wasn’t very social and was never quite fluent in English.
By the mid-1980s, many curators, writers, and fellow artists knew what Hsieh was doing—even if, as is so often the case with his work, they didn’t understand his reasons for doing it or what it meant. Some were dismissive, but others responded to the extraordinary nature of his art with engagement and respect. In 1980, the poet and performance artist Jackson Mac Low wrote a postcard to Hsieh, asking (sympathetically, he stressed), “Why do you do such performances?… There must be much more to them than is apparent.” Two years later, in the midst of One Year Performance 1981–1982 (Outdoor Piece), Hsieh was arrested after an altercation with a man on the street; the judge in the case didn’t make Hsieh enter the courtroom, because he’d read an article on the artist’s work in The Wall …
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Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ March 11, 2026
Stop Making Sense
The extreme performance art of Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
In his performances, he questioned whether or not an artwork needed to supply a specific meaning in order to generate a feeling.
Jillian Steinhauer
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
One Year Performance 1978–1979.(Claire Fergusson)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue.
On September 30, 1978, the performance artist Tehching Hsieh had himself locked inside a jail cell he’d built in his studio in lower Manhattan. The space was surrounded by wooden bars and measured just over 100 square feet; it contained a cot, a sink, a mirror, a pail, and a single bare light bulb on one wall. A friend brought Hsieh food and emptied the pail that he used as a toilet. For an entire year, Hsieh did not talk, read, write, listen to music, or watch TV. He thought and paced, slept and ate; he washed his hands and brushed his teeth. Each day, he marked the passage of time by having his photograph taken and carving a single mark into the wall with his nail clippers. On September 29, 1979, he was released.
One Year Performance 1978–1979—or Cage Piece, as it’s more commonly known —was neither Hsieh’s first artwork nor his first performance. But it signaled the start of a period in which he subjected himself to several yearlong feats of endurance in the name of art: After the cage, he would go on to punch a time clock literally once every hour, live outside on the streets of New York City, and tie himself, 24/7, to another artist, Linda Montano. All of these pieces were shaped by strict rules and meticulously documented. Together, they started to bring Hsieh, who was then an undocumented immigrant from Taiwan, into the avant-garde art world of New York—albeit at a remove, since he wasn’t very social and was never quite fluent in English.
By the mid-1980s, many curators, writers, and fellow artists knew what Hsieh was doing—even if, as is so often the case with his work, they didn’t understand his reasons for doing it or what it meant. Some were dismissive, but others responded to the extraordinary nature of his art with engagement and respect. In 1980, the poet and performance artist Jackson Mac Low wrote a postcard to Hsieh, asking (sympathetically, he stressed), “Why do you do such performances?… There must be much more to them than is apparent.” Two years later, in the midst of One Year Performance 1981–1982 (Outdoor Piece), Hsieh was arrested after an altercation with a man on the street; the judge in the case didn’t make Hsieh enter the courtroom, because he’d read an article on the artist’s work in The Wall …
Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
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Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ March 11, 2026
Stop Making Sense
The extreme performance art of Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh—an “Artist Without Art”
In his performances, he questioned whether or not an artwork needed to supply a specific meaning in order to generate a feeling.
Jillian Steinhauer
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
One Year Performance 1978–1979.(Claire Fergusson)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue.
On September 30, 1978, the performance artist Tehching Hsieh had himself locked inside a jail cell he’d built in his studio in lower Manhattan. The space was surrounded by wooden bars and measured just over 100 square feet; it contained a cot, a sink, a mirror, a pail, and a single bare light bulb on one wall. A friend brought Hsieh food and emptied the pail that he used as a toilet. For an entire year, Hsieh did not talk, read, write, listen to music, or watch TV. He thought and paced, slept and ate; he washed his hands and brushed his teeth. Each day, he marked the passage of time by having his photograph taken and carving a single mark into the wall with his nail clippers. On September 29, 1979, he was released.
One Year Performance 1978–1979—or Cage Piece, as it’s more commonly known —was neither Hsieh’s first artwork nor his first performance. But it signaled the start of a period in which he subjected himself to several yearlong feats of endurance in the name of art: After the cage, he would go on to punch a time clock literally once every hour, live outside on the streets of New York City, and tie himself, 24/7, to another artist, Linda Montano. All of these pieces were shaped by strict rules and meticulously documented. Together, they started to bring Hsieh, who was then an undocumented immigrant from Taiwan, into the avant-garde art world of New York—albeit at a remove, since he wasn’t very social and was never quite fluent in English.
By the mid-1980s, many curators, writers, and fellow artists knew what Hsieh was doing—even if, as is so often the case with his work, they didn’t understand his reasons for doing it or what it meant. Some were dismissive, but others responded to the extraordinary nature of his art with engagement and respect. In 1980, the poet and performance artist Jackson Mac Low wrote a postcard to Hsieh, asking (sympathetically, he stressed), “Why do you do such performances?… There must be much more to them than is apparent.” Two years later, in the midst of One Year Performance 1981–1982 (Outdoor Piece), Hsieh was arrested after an altercation with a man on the street; the judge in the case didn’t make Hsieh enter the courtroom, because he’d read an article on the artist’s work in The Wall …
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