Tehching Hsieh's Thirteen Year Plan Installation Debuts at Dia Beacon Retrospective

Performance artist Tehching Hsieh's Thirteen Year Plan (1986–1999) is being presented publicly for the first time as part of the exhibition 'Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999' at Dia Beacon in New York. The retrospective, on view through 2027, showcases Hsieh's durational performance works, including his well-known year-long pieces where he confined himself in a cage and punched a time clock hourly. The Thirteen Year Plan installation occupies approximately 7,000 square feet of the museum's basement gallery—a space that was once a Nabisco box-printing factory—and features an empty room with a concrete floor and structural pillars. Hsieh conceived the exhibition layout to distinguish between 'art time,' represented by rooms dedicated to each performance, and 'life time,' embodied by the corridors connecting them. The artist, who gained recognition for his extreme endurance works, announced on New Year's Eve 1986 that he would create art privately for thirteen years without public display. Following this period, which concluded at the millennium's end, Hsieh ceased artistic production. The Dia Beacon presentation includes artifacts from his performances, such as personal items used during his year outdoors. Hsieh has expressed that the installation uses the 'language' of museum space to convey the experience of time, emphasizing conceptual engagement over physical objects. The exhibition's scale and design align with Hsieh's vision, utilizing the venue's 30,000-square-foot basement to articulate his exploration of temporal boundaries and artistic practice.