Ai weiwei - Recent London exhibition and general information
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Information about Ai Weiwei for my first year fine art BA assessment for a module.
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Ai weiwei - Recent London exhibition and general information
- 1. AI WEIWEI : BATTLE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT by Nancy
- 2. BACKGROUND
- 3. Ai Weiwei’s background Ai weiwei was born in 1957 to Ai Qing, a famous poet. He works as an artist and a political activist, and practically all of his work is politically charged to varying degrees. 1958- exiled to Xinjiang for labour camp 1978 - Studied at Beijing film academy but focused on the Avant Garde art group - stars
- 4. BACKGROUND After his time at the university, he lived in the US from 1981 to 1993 and studied at Parsons school of design for a short while, then attended the Art Students League of New York during this period (1983 - 1986). He met a number of other artists, however the most important influences for his work came from Marcel Duchamp , Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. This is what gave birth to his ‘conceptual artist’ title, as he began to change readymade objects.
- 5. BACKGROUND - In 1993, Ai’s father fell ill so he returned to China - He helped to develop the ‘Beijing east village,’ a community of artists who lived in ‘low-quality migrant worker housing’ - He then created 3 books promoting this ‘new generation’ of artists, called the Black Cover book (1994), White Cover book (1995) and the Gray cover book (1997)
- 6. GALLERIES
- 7. LISSON GALLERY - Ai Weiwei is affiliated with the Lisson Gallery, they describe his art to be: ‘audacious gestures that command global attention, but always underlain with humor and compassion’ ‘Ai distils ancient and modern aesthetics in works of salvage or iconoclasm’
- 8. LISSON GALLERY - Some of his most notable solo exhibitions are : - Haus der Kunst, Munich (2009) - Tate Modern, London (2010) - Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2011) - Washington D.C. (2012) - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2012) - Indianapolis museum of art (2013)
- 10. THE BEGINNING OF A DISSIDENT : BEIJING OLYMPICS
- 11. Beijing Bird’s nest Stadium (2008) Afterwards, the state tightened its controls; China became a police state. "Friendship, fair play, glory, honour and peace": the Olympic slogan is an empty one.
- 13. ‘STRAIGHT’ (2008-2012) 150 tonnes of steel rebar straightened out, from the framework of the school destroyed in the earthquake. The work took 4 years to make due to huge number of the bars that had to be straightened.
- 14. STRAIGHT (2008 - 2012) ‘Let's just ask how many people, and how old are they. And nobody gave us an answer. So I said, Okay - maybe i'll do research myself.’ “At least we can find out who is dead, and we only wanted to focus on the children - because we see too many student's backpacks strewn everywhere, textbooks, pencils” - Ai Weiwei, (2015) Ai Weiwei and Tim Marlow in Conversation: Part 1
- 16. REMEMBERING (2009) on the facade of Haus der Kunst (munich) ‘‘She has been living in this world happily for 7 years’ embering (2009), 100 x 1000cm
- 17. THE AFTERMATH OF THE INVESTIGATION In August 2009 in Chengdu, officials came to Ai Weiwei’s residence in Chengdu,and detained and attacked him before he could make it to court to testify for Tan Zuoren, another activist who helped to reveal the names of the students killed in the earthquake. They placed him in holding,missing the trial, and Tan Zuoren was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Despite Ai providing evidence of police brutality, the police denied it.
- 18. STUDIO CONTROVERSY - On the 11th January 2011, one of Ai Weiwei’s studios was demolished - despite the fact that the government had overseen the building of the studio. - Accused him of lacking a proper planning permit, dubbing it ‘illegal,’ even though according to Ai, the government was involved in helping him plan it. - They placed him under house arrest in November 2010 to ‘prevent the planned party marking the demolition of his newly built Shanghai studio.’
- 19. Hie Xie, (2010)
- 20. 2011 ARREST - Weiwei was arrested on April 3rd 2011 at the Beijing Airport while he was waiting for his flight to Hong Kong. - Government officers came to his studio and detained 8 staff members, along with his wife. - They took his laptops and his hard drives, claiming his arrest was first due to his departure procedures being incomplete, then charging him for ‘economic crimes.’
- 22. “He was watched all the time during his detention under obsessive surveillance at a very close proximity,” says Maurizio Bortolotti, curator S.A.C.R.E.D
- 23. ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION - CAO (2014) and Marble Stroller (2014)
- 24. Cao(2014) - ‘The wild fire can burn, not destroy it - because when the spring comes, it becomes green again’ - Ai Weiwei
- 25. Marble Stroller (2014) and Surveillance Camera(2010)
- 26. HOW THE WESTERN WORLD VIEWS HIM - China sees him as a dissident and a rebel - Europe and the Western art world almost idolise him, being listed in ArtReview’s ‘The Power 100’ (the most powerful figures in contemporary art) twice, ranked 43rd and 13th respectively – finally winning first place in October 2011. - The Chinese Authorities criticised this, with Liu Weimin (the Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman) saying : - "China has many artists who have sufficient ability. We feel that a selection that is based purely on a political bias and perspective has violated the objectives of the magazine"
- 27. CRITICISM FROM THE WESTERN WORLD In 2013, an art critic called Jed Perl said that he admired Ai’s fight against the political regime in China – however labelled his work ‘alternately inane’ or ‘derivative of American Modernism.’ He also described it as ‘highly diluted Dadaism’ and ‘Postmodern minimalist political kitsch’
- 28. WHY DOES THE ART WORLD LOVE HIM? - Ratnam says that the work contains a ‘certain level of cultural condescension’ - As Ai is more used to the cultural climate in the US, it he’s more attuned to the Western art world than other famous Chinese contemporary artists
- 29. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995, 3 black and white prints, each 148 x 121 cm
- 30. AI WEIWEI’S PLACE IN THE ART WORLD -With this growing criticism of his work from Western artists/curators, some people have started to liken Weiwei’s work to those of political extremists such as the Red Guards (A group of youths in a paramilitary force – who wanted to: ‘sweep away reactionary, decadent bourgeois and feudal influences, and all old ideas, culture, customs and habits’
- 31. HOW SHOULD WE REACT TO HIS WORK
Editor's Notes
- Due to his father’s support of Chairman Mao, his life was influenced by politics at an early age. His father was exiled (along with weiwei and his mother) for 16 years to Xinjiang for a ‘reeducation through labour’ camp. He returned to Beijing at 19 when politics started to die down and He studied at the Beijing film academy in 1978, originally studying animation. He then founded the ‘avant garde’ art group called ‘stars’ with a number of other Chinese artists who thought they brought something new to the art world.
- In 1993, Ai came back to China because of his father’s illness, and was able to aid in establishing the ‘Beijing East Village,’ a place just off the third ring road on the city’s border that allowed new and experimental arists to live together in a community. From this, he created 3 books with Feng Boyi - a chinese curator, and sold them under the radar through various connections in the art world. According to Ai, ‘If you knew somebody, you could get one, but there was no distribution’. Feng Boyi described Ai Weiwei as a person who has surpassed the role of an artist due to his political involvement and drive for change.
- Over the course of his career, Ai Weiwei has displayed his art in various joint and solo exhibitions around the world. These are considered Weiwei’s most important solo exhibitions according to the Lisson Gallery : Haus der Kunst, Munich (2009) Tate Modern, London (2010) Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2011) Washington D.C. (2012) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2012) Indianapolis museum of art (2013) Martin Gropius Bau (2014) Royal Academy of Arts (2015) Most of the work i’ll be talking about comes from his most recent 2015 exhibition at the RA, one of the largest exhibitions of 2015 which Ai Weiwei attended himself, after not being able to travel for 4 years and only recently just regaining his passport from the Chinese government.
- Ai Weiwei became well-known when he, in 2004 a relatively successful but unknown artist at the time, was invited to design the ‘birds nest’ with Swiss architects ‘Herzog & de Meuron’ for the Beijing Olympic games in 2008. Despite this giving him immense success, he left the project due to his hate for the communist party, claiming that: “It was merely a stage for a political party to advertise its glory to the world” and that ‘ I was so involved in architecture that it opened my eyes to society, dealing with bureaucracy, policies and workers,” “and then you start to realise why they are building, and how they are using it. It is a very political act.” He also called the games a ‘totalitarian spectacle’ - and this was the event that would set him on the path to beoming a full on activist.
- This is the bird’s nest stadium that he was the artistic consultant for. He commented that the olympic ideals were lost, and that the government failed to include the people and failed to take a stance on ‘Major Social and political’ issues, also saying that the spirit of joy in the olympics was lost.
- Ai Weiwei’s turbulent relationship with the government escalated in light of the Sichuan 8.0 magnitude Earthquake in May 2008 Estimated, there were at least 70,000 people who were killed - and most of them were schoolchildren
- Straight’ was the result a piece that took 4 years in the making, another political statement meant to shame the government for refusing to provide the official list of students who perished in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It was made with 150 tonnes of Steel Rebar, discovered 10 days after the quake itself when weiwei led a team to survey the area. He realised that the shoddy iron would be resold to iron companies,and structures like this would be build again, so he managed to buy all the rebars. His assistants and him got to work by bending all the rebars back to their original ‘factory state’ Shortly after this, he was detained in 2011 for 81 days, but when he got back, he went back to the studio and heard the sounds of people still working on straightening the bars, he said that he’ll ‘always remember the sound’ He discovered that the main reason so many died because the school was not properly constructed, but the government refused to acknowledge this - so he created a ‘citizens investigation’ to uncover all the names of the dead students.
- Weiwei focused more on students because of his reaction upon visiting the earthquake site - childrens backpacks were thrown amongst the rubble, along with textbooks and pencils - innocent items that reflected innocent children
- Weiwei sent a mass post on twitter, encouraging people to send in their information about the Sichuan earthquake, and labelled it ‘Citizens investigation.’ He and an environmentalist, Tan Zuoren both seperately ran proposals to gather names of the children who died in the quake. He was eventually able to send 40 groups of volunteers to the site to help his investigation, however every single person involved was arrested. The local police destroyed the list of names and photographs that the volunteers had put together. He also encouraged people to say the names aloud, in which all of the names were compiled into a single audio file. By 14th April 2009, he had 5,385 names on his blog, and despite the government approved shutdown of his blog the following month, the names were printed out and blown up to a larger scale 2 large walls were filled in the Royal Academy of Arts in the most recent exhibition.
- -This piece of art, and several other pieces of art were made in response to the earthquake. After visiting the site, Weiwei wanted to pay tribute to one of the victims of the Earthquake.Due to a request from the student’s mother for her daughter to be remembered, and this was all she wanted - she didn’t want the state’s money -Ai weiwei took vibrantly coloured childrens backpacks to highlight the carefree and the unashamed vibrancy of young children, and arranged them to form the Chinese characters that said - ‘She has been living happily in this world for 7 years’ - which was the line the child’s own mother used to comemmorat this was
- On the 11th January 2011, one of Ai Weiwei’s studios was demolished - despite the fact that the government had overseen the building of the studio. Accused him of lacking a proper planning permit, dubbing it ‘illegal,’ even though according to Ai, the government was involved in helping him plan it. They placed him under house arrest in November 2010 to ‘prevent the planned party marking the demolition of his newly built Shanghai studio. During this time, Weiwei organised a feast including 400 of his supporters to commemorate the demolition , however The party that took place afterwards continued without Weiwei (as his house arrest continued continued until a the next day, when he was released. expected), and he left his supporters to feast on river crabs, and In Chinese, the words river crabs mean two things: one is harmony, and the other is slang for censorship. This inspired another of Weiwei’s artworks - the 3200 painted river crabs.
- Like the sunflower seeds, the river crabs are made from porcelain - a chinese commodity, and also like the sunflower seeds , he addressed mass production for western consumption, but that wasn’t the main idea behind his art. As the work contains river crabs, it is representative of the feast that Weiwei missed - and in these artworks you can see a clearer retaliation to the government each time. This work
- Weiwei was arrested on April 3rd 2011 at the Beijing Airport while he was waiting for his flight to Hong Kong. Government officers came to his studio and detained 8 staff members, along with his wife. They took his laptops and his hard drives, claiming his arrest was first due to his departure procedures being incomplete, then charging him for ‘economic crimes.’
- The work S.A.C.R.E.D, which was also present in the Royal Academy’s recent show, consists of 6 5x12 boxes made of iron. It is a 6 part piece of artwork using 6 dioramas Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy and Doubt The iron boxes have small indented doors, and on each box, there’s a small window/windows that reveals A single scene, rememebered by Ai Weiwei, that shows what happened during his 81 day long deposition. Tim Marlowe- When you were in prison, were you thinking one of the ways of surviving and thinking am I gonna get out of this is ‘ I will make works of art about this’ or was that NOT in your mind? ‘when I was in prison, I would never think that I can come out’ They told Weiwei that he would be there for over 10 years At that time, being an artist or not an artist doesn’t sound very important.
- -The scenes are constructed from fiberglass, iron, oxidised metal,wood,polystyrene and sticky tape for the wallpaper. In each box, only 3 characters are present. -Ai Weiwei and the two guards watching him. The whole process of looking through the windows feels instrusive because it’s almost as if we’re spying on the scene ourselves while it’s happening, yet we’re powerless to change anything. The two guards are depicted to go anywhere with him while he’s confined in that room, like watching him go to the bathroom, watching him shower, watching him sleep and interrogating him. These scenes are really specific, all taken from Ai’s own remembrance of the room - saying that ‘The minutiae, from the clothes hanging in his closet to the white padding on his cell walls, were reconstructed from Ai’s memory.’ He reduced the size of the scene by 50% to make it seem as if it was ‘small like a play’ rather than reality ‘The six fiberglass dioramas depict painstakingly detailed scenes of how Ai spent his days.’
- In an interview with Tim Marlow at the Royal Academy, Ai revealed the intention of one of the rooms in his exhibition which contained only marble work - a response to the ‘moment’ when he discovered just how large the extent of surveillance he was under. The marble grass links to his home in Caochangdi, which means ‘grass field’, and the grass symbolises roots. It relates to a line from Chinese poetry: ‘ The wild fire can burn, not destroy it, because when the spring comes - it becomes green again’.
- MARBLE GRASS - Links to his home in Caochangdi, as it means ‘Grass field’ and grass is symbolic of roots. It relates to a saying from Chinese poetry : ‘The wild fire can burn, not destroy it - because when the spring comes, it becomes green again’ Ai Weiwei The Marble grass was individually crafted, and was very fragile. Marble was used instead of iron because it had a movement to it, whereas iron was too stiff for the idea that he wanted to show. The difficulty making this piece represents the idea of ‘Impossibility,’ however what is considered impossible has become possible.
- and the baby’s stroller relates to his son. After Weiwei was released from the detainment, he often picked his son up to go to the park (which could be represented by the grass also) and his driver noticed a nearby photographer. He confronted him and was outraged at the level of privacy that they took away from him, espcially during his time with his son.This explains the significance of the surveillance camera. Even doing mudane activities, not related to politics, he was being watched. After his confrontation, he opened up the pictures on the memory card and saw a picture of his son’s stroller. ‘I was speechless to see how a state functions, how they invade people.’ ‘they are only poweful because they violate very essential values’ The Surveillance camera was made before the stroller, but China’s state of the goverment is still very relevant to this.
- There’s a huge contrast with how the European art world view Ai Weiwei as opposed to how China views him. China sees Ai as a dissident and a rebel, who constantly needs to be punished or monitored and is seen as a threat to the communist party. However, Europe and the Western art world view him as an art hero – an example being ArtReview – an international contemporary art magazine from London which placed Ai first out of 100 in the annual ‘The power 100’ list in 2011 The Chinese authorities criticised their decision, claiming that China had ‘many artists who have sufficient ability,’ and that they felt choosing Ai Weiwei because of political bias ‘violated’ the objectives of the magazine.
- However, the Chinese government isn’t the only one that thinks that Ai Weiwei’s work isn’t up to scratch. According to one of the writers for ‘The Spectator,’ Niru Ratnam, he calls Weiwei ‘The perfect Asian artist for lazy western curators.’ The tagline continues to say ; His attitude to the Chinese Authorities may be admirable – but his work isn’t up to much.’ In 2013, an art critic called Jed Perl said that he admired Ai’s fight against the political regime in China – however labelled his work ‘alternately inane’ or ‘derivative of American Modernism.’ He also described it as ‘highly diluted Dadaism’ and ‘Postmodern minimalist political kitsch’ -A more unpopular opinion almost pins Weiwei as using the blanket of dissidence as an excuse to promote his own art. This was said by Francesco Bonami, a very well respected curator. - Bonami even went so far as to say ‘I think he should be put in jail for his art, and not for his dissidence.’
- The same writer for the spectator, Niru Ratnam, says that embedded within Ai Weiwei’s work contains a ‘Certain level of cultural condescension,’ meaning that the work is very obviously representative of Chinese culture – which allows the West to absorb the ideas more easily and claim that they understand it. As Ai Weiwei is used to the cultural climate of the US, it means that he’s more attuned to the Western art world than any other current Chinese contemporary artists, so either he knows how to pander to the public OR his ideas have naturally manifested themselves into such easily digestible representations of culture,
- Some Western curators or members of the art world could pride themselves on understanding or even just appreciating the work ‘Dropping a Han Dynasty Vase,’ as the vase is an obvious representation of China, and him dropping something as valuable as a vase dating back to the Han Dynasty can be seen very clearly (especially to western eyes) as a rejection of Chinese culture, an idea that the Western world is eager to get behind in order to support Weiwei. Ai Weiwei’s biggest artistic influences being Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp are huge parts of his Westernised method of presenting the Chinese culture, treating everything as a readymade object – and again making it easier to digest for Westerners. The problem is that many members of the art world take part in Western style art, and their only window to other cultures are popular artists that hail from said cultures, so when such a huge artist like Ai emerges from China – they all band together to take his point of view and support him rather than trying to understand the situation itself.
- While the western art world continues to glorify Ai Weiwei as being the voice of China’s political change, some people in the west are growing more and more disenchanted with the idea of some of Ai’s more extreme artwork, extreme being destroying the age old vase that many hold valuable to traditional Chinese culture. Some people even liken Ai’s work to that of the Red Guards, a paramilitary group organised by youths themselves during the Cultural revolution, who’s modus operandi was to wipe out enemies of Mao Zedong. One of the quotes from morningsun.org, a website about the cultural revolution, describes their objective as to ‘‘sweep away reactionary, decadent bourgeois and feudal influences, and all old ideas, culture, customs and habits’’ < which, to people less than fond of Ai Weiwei’s ideals, compare it to Ai’s dropping of the Han Dynasty vase
- hen I first started researching Weiwei, I immediately agreed with the things he was saying about the Chinese government, based on what he said about their treatment of him, and partly the western world’s love for him. However, I realised I was taking a more Western approach to his art because I was born here and so I probably couldn’t fully undrrstand where he was coming from - I was only understanding what he wanted the western world to see. I only thought of this when my dad, a Chinese immigrant told me that he thought Weiwei was a troublemaker and stirred up unecessary problems. The Chinese government is corrupt, but he grew up in rural China and experienced the cultural revolution and all the problems themselves, and has had a firsthand experience. My dad was also an artist. and from then on I realised I was just as bad, following Ai Weiwei blindly through my own research rather than digging deeper myself. The only thing that I can say is that unless we dig deeper, we will only be able to understand things from a westerner’s point of view, and even if an art critic can judge Ai’s work from a professional curator’s perspective and come out with a negative review, we should decide for ourselves whether the art can be seperated from such huge meanings like politics, and be judged on execution instead like Bonami wants it to be. Or if these two things are inseperable, and the idea is as much a part of the art as the execution itself.