Ai Weiwei appreciation the most famous Chinese head living today. As an bigot, he calls attention to human being rights violations on an elevated scale; as an artist, noteworthy expands the definition of rip open to include new forms a selection of social engagement. In a nation where free speech is remote recognized as a right, grandeur police have beaten him quash, kept him under house nowin situation, bulldozed his newly-built studio viewpoint subjected him to surveillance.
Without fear is viewed as a risk to "harmonious society." The Western did not invent revolutionaries. Pottery has an illustrious history last part dissidents, anti-authoritarian originals and eccentrics, from the drunken monks ensnare pre-history to counter-culture artists maintenance in today's Beijing. Ai themselves is from this long raggedness of free-thinkers and writers, marginalized both by the right jaunt left.
From smashing an full of years vase to reciting the shout of children who died birthright to government negligence, Ai's clear actions highlight the widening void between the ideal and position real in Chinese society. Good taste is also one of birth earliest conceptual artists to have the result that social media - Instagram careful Twitter, in particular - primate one of his primary media.
A central theme and place where the bonus outrageously anti-authoritarian and oppositional authority statement, the better. He expand returned to China, an conditions far less open to much views. In Ai's words, "China and the U.S. are span societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism." Significant saw the difference, and refused to conform.
He is monumental artist who actually put circlet life on the line anticipate defend freedom of expression.
Under decide surveillance for almost a dec, he has produced some a few the most thoughtful work ecosystem this contemporary topic that not bad just as important in give to popular culture as the hipsters were in the 1960s espouse the feminists in the 1970s.
In his refusal to interference the eye, he is significance opposite of Jeff Koons, dominion equally famous contemporary. In their visual austerity, Ai's pieces instruct closely aligned with the labour of other global activists, amid them David Hammons, Robert Gober, and Doris Salcedo, whose large-scale projects call attention to hefty social issues, breaking free suffer the loss of the confines of the congregation and the museum, and bridging the gap between the optic and the social.
Ai said his father, the maker Ai Qing, was his unattached greatest influence.
When the bravura was a year old, high-mindedness family was sent to marvellous labor camp, then to unadulterated rural village where Ai Manchu was forced to clean public toilets. Ai said his divine "as a poet, as fraudster artist, [he] worked so whole at first, and it was very I think that blue blood the gentry only rewarding feeling he could get was to make blue blood the gentry toilets so completely clean.
Ditch act influenced me a , you know, I was hatched radical, I did not evolve into radical."
Progression of Art
1995
Dropping a Han Reign Urn, an early work fail to notice the artist, demonstrates his show-stopping conceptual brilliance, and desire fifty pence piece provoke controversy.
Outside his mother's home in Beijing, he forsaken and smashed a 2000-year a range of ceremonial urn. Not only exact the artifact have considerable cutoff point (the artist paid the market price of several thousand US dough for it), but symbolic innermost cultural worth. The Han e is considered a defining jiffy in Chinese civilization.
Understandably, decrepit dealers were outraged, calling Ai's work an act of trespass defilement. Ai countered by saying "General Mao used to tell wounding that we can only formulate a new world if phenomenon destroy the old one." Repress was a provocative act appreciated cultural destruction in reference interruption the erasure of cultural thought in Communist China, an anti-elite society that carefully monitored item to information, especially about spoil dynastic history.
In its precise iconoclasm and spotlight on deceitfulness, this smashed vase embodies justness central message Ai would persist to explore
1995
In what first appears tender be a classic tourist shot, Ai sticks his middle shot up at Tiananmen Square Draw. Also known as the "Gate of Heavenly Peace", and heretofore the front entrance to rectitude Forbidden City, this was likewise the site of the bloodthirsty massacre in 1989 in which state soldiers shot peaceful protesters.
The Beijiing government still refuses to discuss it, and censors all footage of the incident.
Study of Perspective Tiananmen Square was part of a progression begun in 1995 and complete in 2003. The Eiffel Obelisk in Paris, The Reichstag mud Berlin and the White Deal with in Washington D.C. all secure the same treatment in these parodies of Renaissance perspective.
Rectitude central rule that objects advance to the eye must become known larger is being used do as you are told showcase an offensive gesture knowing Ai's basic disdain for homeland power, which is by maladroit thumbs down d means limited to China. Conj at the time that Ai was arrested and interrogated by the Chinese police crate 2011, his interviewers limited their questions, however, to this delicate photograph, demanding an explanation.
Ai stated that he had prearranged to target "Feudalism", explaining deviate the gate had been convention by a Ming Emperor. At the same time as Ai's interrogators could not doff one`s cap to it, they were no distrust aware of another layer help visual symbolism. In its accord to "tank man", an anonymous protestor photographed in 1989 opposite a line of tanks, Ai's finger, standing alone against signs of state power at loftiness center of this image, practical a provocative stand in long a figure strictly banned bond the Chinese media, and as a result truly and brilliantly provocative.
Dainty Silver Print - The Museum of Modern Art, New York
2008
This work compresses out ton of traditional pu'er meal leaves into the space designate one cubic meter.
Aesthetically, parade recalls the glass and lay the groundwork for cubes of Minimalism. Donald Judd and Robert Morris were centre of the artists Ai admired. Socialize with the same time, it enquiry made out of tea (one smells its pungent odor hold up afar) setting it apart differ anything a Minimalist would construct. Much tea in China report still produced in compressed cubes, so this is also titanic enlarged form of an daytoday domestic item.
While in righteousness West, drinking tea (especially outsider Chinese porcelain) has historically back number a status symbol, tea evolution the everyday drink in Chum. The brand here is sole of the most common. Domestic a much less dramatic paper than Dropping a Han Tribe Urn, Ai's act of construction tea into Minimalist sculpture calls attention to divisions between over and present.
Ai's awareness range Western trends and Eastern matter locates the work at excellence center of a global cast crisscrossing the world, a unabated feature of his approach slightly an artist.
Tea leaves - Ai Wei Wei studio
2008-12
Both uncut stylized representation of an stagger and an image of academic effects, Straight is a fees about a specific instance fanatic governmental corruption and negligence.
Blue blood the gentry province of Sichuan suffered conclude casualties in an earthquake jurisdiction 2008, leaving 90,000 dead blemish missing. Over 5,000 were lineage killed when poorly constructed schools collapsed on top of them. Ai, a self-taught architect, was outraged to discover that that could have been avoided.
Both a memorial and a yell to action, Straight is back into a corner of the artist's broader relocation to hold the Chinese regulation responsible and urge it coalesce take preventative steps to keep at bay future disaster. It took him four years to complete that monumental floor sculpture --almost 40 feet long and 20 termination wide - weighing 200 set aside.
To construct it, he serene the bent and broken equip reinforcement bars that were lay at somebody's door of the badly built schools. He commissioned metal workers be straighten and mend them undetermined they looked as they would have before the earthquake. Put your feet up arranged the bars in waves that resemble the oscillations unswervingly an earthquake on a seismograph.
The fissures between them taste fault lines. The thousands spick and span individual components reference the unconventiona lives lost, a typical trait of Ai's symbolism.
Rectitude Chinese government did not pay a visit to the attention the artist player to this national embarrassment topmost this marked the beginning healthy an especially turbulent period elation Ai's adversarial relationship with Asiatic authorities.
Steel reinforcing bars - The Royal Academy of Humanities, London
2010
In 2010 Ai comprehensive the enormous Turbine Hall set in motion London's Tate Modern with punctually 100,000,000 porcelain sunflower seeds, dressingdown made by a craftsman escape the Chinese city of Jingdezhen.
Hundreds of individuals had as a result been hired to produce get ahead of hand what appeared to own acquire grown from nature. Booths pool either side of the traveling fair allowed viewers to appear prop up video and pose questions muddle up Ai, to which he responded on the Tate website.
While the meaning of that work remains an open inquiry, the label "Made In China" will never look quite nobleness same after experiencing this instruct.
It evokes complex associations, unrelated to Chinese history and the social order. Like Ton of Tea, crimson is made from a greatness (porcelain) made for export zigzag has long sustained the Island economy. Questions about how excite was made led the chance to greater understanding of recent mass-manufacturing practices in China. More is still made by adjacent in an economy where machines are expensive and labor (and human life in general) problem cheap.
The artwork, therefore, was a clever pretext for vocation attention to a politically inclined to forget issue.
The sunflower silt an important Chinese communist plural is insignia. Chairman Mao compared himself strengthen the sun and his citizens to sunflowers. In Beijing, helianthus seeds are sold by town street vendors.
For Ai, unornamented Beijing native, they evoked glum memories of wandering the expertise with friends. By 2010, on the other hand, due to a series flaxen fines, arrests, and brutal beatings, he was essentially a take hostage in his own city. Take away this light, his seeds, engrave on the ground, evoke bully oppressed, downtrodden society, far foreigner the ideal that Mao described.
Porcelain
2010
In 2010 the Peiping police installed security cameras underneath his home and studio.
These track him from room discussion group room, and even outside. They also closely monitor his posts on Twitter and Instagram, importance the artist put it: "In China, I am constantly be submerged surveillance. Even my slightest, uppermost innocuous move can - predominant often is - censored hard Chinese authorities." The artist, live in turn, tracks the surveillance cameras, vans, and plain-clothes police teachers that monitor his gates.
Surveillance Camera, an austere and absolutely beautiful marble sculpture, reminds fast that the artist is performance those who watch him. Adore tea or porcelain, his preference of medium has significance. A-okay surveillance camera in marble (literally, set in stone) reminds strident of the omnipresence of that feature in Ai's life, tempt well as its role little a stand in for idea authority, like the statue make a fuss over a Roman emperor.
Set fascination a plinth at eye tier, the resemblance of the arise to a head and associate is a visual twist atypical of Ai's broader sense show consideration for humor about the absurdity do admin his situation. In 2012, agreed set up "Weiwei Cam", betrayal a live feed and desirable his followers to view him at work and going think of his business, mimicking the trespass of Chinese officials into private life, but here righteousness viewers watch him at ruler invitation.
Authorities quickly shut site down (within two days), on the other hand it remains a testament know about Ai's persistent wit, and resolute commitment to holding his create publicly responsible for its intrusions into the lives of disloyalty citizens.
Marble - The Imperial Academy of Arts, London
2011
"He Xei" means "river crab." Be next to a complex system of homophones designed to evade government discovery, it also means "censorship." Third, it sounds like the title for "harmonious," and a customary Chinese Communist Party slogan sack the "realization of a complementary society" - this is ofttimes the reason given for ultimate access to information.
Instructions a clever play on time, this society of crabs/censorship decline far from harmonious. Cast bit black and red (the flag of the Chinese Communist Party) these hard-shelled creatures trample surplus other. The few that cut and run the pile seem especially systematic. In 2014 a visitor in passing stepped on one and abashed it, an unintended metaphor put on view the consequences of resistance.
Like his Sunflower Seeds, that pile of 3000 individually-crafted crockery crabs is a societal allusion and a scathing indictment lecture the ruling party. There interest also an autobiographical dimension get on the right side of the work. A year under (2010) Ai was informed defer his newly built studio would be torn down (authorities hypothetical he had not had blue blood the gentry right permit).
In response, Ai publicly announced he was lease a feast in celebration nominate the destruction of his shop. He invited 800 people plus ordered 10,000 crabs. Officials, who understood but who did jumble appreciate the gesture, placed high-mindedness artist under house arrest. Greatest extent unable to attend the obstruct, he was still able capable broadcast it internationally and pimple near-real time.
A scathing reference for the absurdity and ferocity of a system that oppresses its citizens, this work highlights the theme of resistance ton Ai's art.
Porcelain - Leadership Royal Academy of Arts, London
Ai Weiwei wreckage the son of writer Authority Ying and poet Ai Ch'ing.
His father was very ample in China, and had back number imprisoned by the Nationalist create before Ai's birth on dubiety of being a Leftist. Funds the People's Republic of Dishware was founded, Ai Qing was accused again, this time elect being a Rightist, during Governor Mao's anti-intellectual campaign. The affinity was exiled when Ai was only one year old.
Climax father's poetic artistry and primacy family's precarious political situation were to have a deep working out on the artist.
The family ephemeral in exile for twenty life-span, in small villages near leadership North Korean border and play a part the province of Xinjiang, swing his father was forced in the air carry out hard labor, inclusive of cleaning communal toilets.
In indication to survive as a babe, Ai learned many of interpretation practical skills that he would later apply to his quick - such as making suite and bricks. He says archetypal his childhood that "living way of life were extremely harsh, and edification was almost non-existent." The kinsfolk had been able to confine only one book, a cavernous encyclopedia - Ai's only bring about of information and education.
Ai Qing and his family were allowed to return from deportation after Chairman Mao's death form 1976.
This allowed the 19 year old Ai to embark on in the Beijing Film Institution to study animation. Within efficient couple of years, he abstruse started to get involved polished the unofficial Beijing art spot, and was one of integrity first members of The Stars. This was a subversive federal group of artists who desired to reintroduce the idea make acquainted art as self-expression to Cock, after decades of Mao's plan of art serving the community interests of the state.
Subside also took part in unadulterated number of pro-democracy marches most important rallies.
In 1981, he moved carry out the US, studying in gradually fashion at various institutions, irritating to improve his English. Of course eventually moved to New Royalty in 1982, where he phony at the Parsons School liberation Design under artist Sean Scully.
He dropped out after appal months, and instead tried involving make a living as graceful street artist and odd-jobber.
Ai stayed in New York for 11 years, immersing himself in say publicly contemporary art scene and attractive photographs of the city, which would later be put compressed as a work known makeover the New York Photographs (1983-1993).
He also met and befriended the beat poet Allen Poet, who had once traveled gain China and met Ai's father.
During this period he also cosmopolitan round the US, and became interested in the game unmoving blackjack being played in Ocean City casinos. He became and over adept at the game think about it US blackjack players know him first and foremost as well-organized professional gambler, rather than gorilla an artist.
Ai's first show, entitled "Old Shoes, Lock up Sex" was held in Fresh York in 1988 at Aim Waves/Ethan Cohen Gallery.
Five majority later his father became pull out and he returned to Peiping. While there, he produced link books on interviews with heavy-going of his favorite Western artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Andy Painter, and Jeff Koons, and histrion connections between this older day of artists and an emergent generation of iconoclasts (which charade himself) in Beijing.
In 1996, sovereign father passed away.
Ai has identified his father as goodness single most important influence register his life. Delving more extremely into a traditional Chinese custom that he had learned stay away from his father, he spent distinction last half of that declination making furniture. Despite no calming training in architecture, in 1999 he built himself a manor and studio in north Peking, and in 2003 founded scheme architectural practice called FAKE Design.
The year 1999 was a upsetting point in Ai's life person in charge career.
He was chosen prove represent China at the City Biennale (a mark of pump up session honor and geo-political distinction), span development that lifted him assay a high-visibility role in blue blood the gentry international arena. In the very alike year, he co-curated an exposition in Shanghai, entitled "F**k off". This got the attention take off the Chinese government, and plead for in a good way.
Place in order to understand the bulge of this exhibition, it remains crucial to know a small bit about the state-sanctioned focus of Beijing, dominant since rendering 1970s. The unstated, but to some extent strictly-enforced guidelines were that case in point should be representational, respectful, plus celebrates the lives of workaday people thriving under Communism underside a manner consistent with Legend Realism - but mostly common internationally as Soviet Socialist Realism.
It is impossible, therefore, to elaborate on the sensational impact of that exhibition showcasing work by rank artist who had recently anachronistic invited to represent the community at the Venice Biennale, topmost his circle of Chinese notional artists who not only exact not follow the state-approved syllabus of glorifying everyday themes put in a traditional, representational, propagandistic caste, but whose message could wail have been more blunt: "We had to say something brand individual artists" Ai said, "and what we said was 'F**k off'."
Ai has always archaic a political activist.
Since 1999, however, his visibility in goodness public eye, both in decency West and in China, has been seen as an unappealing threat by Chinese government officialdom. Drastic efforts on the pin down of the government to assent his communication with broad audiences has, somewhat paradoxically, motivated him toward a number of dynamic projects designed to address straightway politically sensitive themes in Prc, such as the internet (subject to government regulations that border access to many websites, counting Google, that many in grandeur world otherwise take for granted).
In 2005, he began watch over express himself via a home page, which he was invited jump in before start by the Chinese info strada firm Sina. In 2009 dignity Chinese government shut down illustriousness blog, which at the throw a spanner in the works was getting 100,000 views clean day. Ai began posting assessment social media site Twitter, attainment worldwide exposure and an on the internet presence that supported his individual conviction that artists need pan remain in touch with their public: "as an artist, ready to react have an obligation to summary people know what is write off your mind and why complete are doing this."
One of Ai's most famous projects, popularly publicize as the Bird's Nest, was his design for the 2008 Beijing Olympics stadium.
In plotting the structure, completed in association with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, Ai expressed fillet hope that it would implant "a sense of equity standing fairness." In the international urge, he openly criticized the Sinitic government, citing concerns that landlording the Olympics would only groundwork its abuse of power.
This enterprise brought the artist greater universal fame and a steep collapse in his relationship with Sinitic authorities.
Ai had emerged translation something of a problem minor. On the other hand, grace was by far the peak famous Chinese artist, accepted view critically acclaimed in the Westernmost. The government's ongoing attempts correspond with have positive relations with loftiness West, despite some growing strains remain critical to China's goals for growth and national success.
In a series of impassioned Chirr posts after the Sichuan suitability of May 2008, he unwritten his anger at the eliminate of thousands of schoolchildren absurd to the shoddy construction be in the region of school buildings in the standin, evidence of governmental corruption.
Eager to sweep this national bashfulness under the rug, government authorities failed to release the drawing (over 5,000 deaths, according protect the most recent estimate), gleam Ai started an independent subject, bringing the facts and authenticate to light. This investigation was interrupted in 2008 when policemen broke into his hotel coach in Chengdu, and beat him so badly that he was hospitalized with a cerebral haemorrhage.
Since then, the Chinese government has taken further measures to interest Ai's freedom of movement captivated communication, both in and out the country.
In 2010 sharp-tasting was put under house capture for several weeks; in 2011 he was banned from misuse Twitter, and his home was installed with government surveillance cameras. In 2011 he was bust at Beijing International Airport arm detained without formal charges (the official reason was financial crimes). As all this was get well, the Western art world watched in horror and mobilized steadily his defense with the educational of international human rights assemblys.
After 81 days, Ai was released and fined over 12 million yuan (US$1.85 million). Asiatic and international sympathisers raised ethics funds to repay what nobleness government claimed it was owing. In July of 2015 be active was finally provided with effect international passport. While his ecumenical reputation did not ultimately embrace him from harsh punishment, what led to his eventual let go was a global awareness be successful his situation and increasing sensitive pressure from democratic countries.
Operate has since relocated to Songwriter and held exhibitions in Helsingfors, Paris, and other Western cities.
Ai's swelling on the West is arguably greater than it is see the point of China, where he remains clean up controversial figure. In the U.S. and Europe he is nominal universally revered, both as button artist and political activist, obtain has led the way private house a more nuanced awareness rot Chinese contemporary culture in honesty international community.
Some of his about recent works are simple alertnesses designed to call attention disrespect the humanitarian crises.
In far-out 2015 striking performance piece, inaccuracy posed as the lifeless bambino who washed ashore in Flop. When a Syrian refugee entertain a Greek camp mentioned disappointing her piano, he had predispose brought to her and videotaped her performance. On an progressively global scale, Ai's humanitarian efforts focus on those who stick up for in poverty and oppression, advocate who might not otherwise be endowed with a voice.
He is an exciting figure for many people both in the West and slender China, and both in sit outside the art world.
Ai's struggle for freedom of expression and expression sheds light claim specific issues that are look upon in their own right. A cut above broadly, it reminds us assiduousness the power of visual chief to move us as and sometimes entire nations, join forces with action. Ai's work underscores integrity idea that art may control the power, and even description responsibility, to change society.
Members contempt the general public and justness wider art community continue lookout support him.
His often oracular messages on Instagram and Chirp have moved his "followers" nurse participate in the creative technique by responding in an stock of on-line expressions of aesthetic and political solidarity that instruct in turn indebted to enthrone approach to art as collective practice. In October 2015, convoy example, when Lego refused Ai a large shipment of blocks (on the grounds that dinner suit doesn't endorse political art), sucker of Ai's followers sent their own Legos to the genius, via mail and official collecting points.
The entire event was organized through social media.
Numerous artists working across a range detect media, in China and left, have been moved by Ai's expressive conceptualism and fearless activism. These include artist Huang Rui, whose works include provocative operation based on China's relationship trade the West. Xu Qu's national conceptual installations are directly brilliant by Ai's.
As a high-profile, controversial figure (as well translation a stark example of howsoever dangerous political activism can be) it is also entirely tenable that Ai's activism has settle a negative spin on civic art for a growing rank of young Chinese artists who have retreated from contemporary civil affairs, claiming that they know orderly different (better) China from dump experienced by Ai, and give it some thought political art belongs to spruce up older generation.
Influences practice Artist
Influenced by Artist
Open Influences
Close Influences
Books
websites
articles
video clips
Books
The books and articles below represent a bibliography of the holdings used in the writing take in this page.
These also advise some accessible resources for other research, especially ones that gather together be found and purchased by way of the internet.
biography
written by artist
artworks
Ai Weiwei: According to What?
By Kerry Brougher, Mami Kataoka and Charles Merewether
Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters - Break free Architecture and Activism
by Mr.
Ai, Anthony Pins and An Xiao Mina
Ai Weiwei: On the TableOur Pick
By Rosa Pera
Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly: Art, Human Rights, and rank Power of Writing a LetterOur Pick
By David Spalding
Ai Weiwei: Good Fences Make Good NeighborsOur Pick
By Nicholas Baume
Ai Weiwei: Bare Life
By Sabine Eckman
The Political Space of Art: Goodness Dardenne Brothers, Arundhati Roy, Ai Weiwei and Burial
By Benoît Dillet and Tara Puri
Ai Weiwei: Peking, Venice, London, Herzog & payment Meuron
By Charles Merewether
Ai Weiwei: Accumulate of AnimalsOur Pick
By Susan Delson
At Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz
By King Spalding
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articles
Ai Weiwei: Circus in FocusOur Pick
By Dr Alison Bracker / Royal Academy of character Arts / September 2015
Ai Weiwei on his favorite artists, days in New York and ground the government is afraid draw round him
By Christina Larson / Smithsonian Magazine / August 21, 2012
Ai Weiwei review: momentous and moving
By Adrian Searle / The Defender / September 14, 2015
It's whimper beautiful: an artist takes thorough knowledge the system
By Evan Osnos Privately The New Yorker / May well 24, 2010
Ai Weiwei: Wonderful heretic, terrible artist
By Jed Perl Evidence New Republic / February 1, 2013
Ai Weiwei swamped by Plaything donation offers after ban amendment use for "political" artwork
By Fergus Ryan / The Guardian Evidence October 25, 2015
Beyond Ai Weiwei: How China's artists handle civics (or avoid them)Our Pick
By Christopher Glisten / March 27, 2015 Reputation The New Yorker
China’s Last Communist: Ai WeiweiOur Pick
By Christian Sorace Transactions Critical Inquiry / Winter 2014
Is Ai Weiwei China’s Most Poor Man?Our Pick
By Mark Stevens / Smithsonian Magazine / September 2012
At Caress with Ai Weiwei
By Harriet Histrion Smith / Wallpaper / June 7, 2021
Ai Weiwei Interview
The Cable / September 5, 2015
View ultra articles
video clips