This article explores pedagogical issues of meaning-making in Western art education, particularly for students in higher education, by analyzing Xu Bing's exhibition, Writing Between Sky and Earth, through the competing theoretical lenses of Jacques Derrida and Karen Barad. The article discusses both theoretical and pedagogical implications generated from the reification of two contemporary theories via transnational contemporary art, arguing that the intimate interaction between art, theories, and students' life experience grants students materialized access to the co-existing familiarity and unfamiliarity of transnational art and empowers students who are fully aware of the politics of difference under globalization to be active participants in theory development.