Look, up in the sky!

Over the course of two years, Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing culled detritus from construction sites across the rapidly changing urban landscape of Beijing, and transformed it into his most monumental project to date: Phoenix (2008-10). A feat of engineering and ingenuity, Phoenix is composed of two birds, a male called Feng and a female called Huang. Feng and Huang - together weighing 12 tons and measuring 90 and 100 feet long, respectively - are now on view at the Cathedral of St John the Divine on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Liu Lian / China Daily