“Never love a person or a country you don’t have the freedom to leave.”
Ai WeiWei
Ai WeiWei (1957-) traces his artistic and activist ancestry though his father, Ai
Quing, a renowned poet and intimate of Mao Zedong. Branded a rightist
during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he was banished to Little Siberia to
live in a dugout and to clean toilets Eventually he was returned to a minor
cultural post in the city. But his new poetry lacked enthusiasm for the new
society, and he was censured and sent to a rehabilitation camp for awhile.
When freed, he returned to writing poetry, though cautious about the
themes.
Feeling those experiences had “shaped or deformed” his childhood, Ai
WeiWei lived in an almost permanent state of tension. He found release
when a kindly old professor pushed for him to study drawing.
“…through painting, I could employ an artistic language to achieve a
sense of calm.”
REFLECT:
What shaped or deformed your childhood?
How did you find release?
He became an animation student at the film academy, where his drawing
skills supported him forging highly prized tickets to foreign films. He met
Zhou Lin there, who had relatives in America. After she left to study in
America, he followed her. Filing an application to pursue self-funded study
abroad, he made his way to New York.
“I wasn’t going to America because I hankered for a Western lifestyle – it
was more that I couldn’t stand living in Beijing anymore.”
He became a portrait street artist, and staged his first solo exhibition in SoHo
– Old Shoes, Safe Sex. Then he photographed a protest and sold one picture to
the New York Times. When he saw his byline, he felt like a part of the city, and
he integrated photography into his artistic life.
When regime change occurred in China, he went on a hunger strike in front
of the United Nations, organized a march, and submitted a letter of protest
to the Chinese consulate. This launched his public life of activism, based on
his fertile imagination, widespread networking and open collaborations.
After 12 years in New York, he chose to return to China, where he immersed
himself in traditional Chinese arts. Merging that study with his activism, he
painted a Coca-Cola logo on the surface of a rare and valuable Han
earthenware urn.
“These little acts of mischief in 1994 marked the starting point of my
reengagement in the making of art. By simply taking a new attitude, I
had regained my sense of self. By alternately destroying the past and
reconstructing it, I was able to make something different.”
In 1995, morphing his photographs into a form of manifesto, he took a photo
of himself giving the finger to Tiananmen Square. Then, bypassing the strict
censorship process, he self-published The Black Cover Book, introducing
foreign art in text and photographs. Soon, 3,000 copies were in circulation,
followed by the printing of The White Cover Book and The Gray Cover Book.
Then he curated Fuck Off, an exhibition of underground art.
Ever versatile, Ai WeiWei became an architect and helped design the Bird’s
Nest Olympic Stadium. Asked to teach architecture, he made a 10 hour 13
minute documentary of Beijing, followed by two companion films monitoring
urban change.
Using the internet as a canvas, he changed to a documentary-making social
activist blogger, posting up to five times a day.
“…opportunities to shape opinion were much briefer than I would have
liked – sometimes just a few seconds … as long as it took for the censor
to delete it.”
When his blogs were shut down by the government, he set up a microblog on
Fanfou, which was also shut down. and then signed up for Twitter.
Wanting a larger audience, he returned to art exhibits. On one tour, police
burst into his room and beat him (the head injuries required brain surgery).
He got a cell phone pixie the attack and uploaded it, along with a recording.
With an attorney, he went to the police station and filmed a documentary,
Disturbing the Peace.
“Sometimes friends ask me how to film a documentary. There are three
cardinal rules, I tell them: start filming, keep filming, and never stop
filming.”
While Ai WeiWei’s reputation as a truth teller grew in China, his reputation for
extraordinary cultural art grew internationally, and he was invited to exhibit
in Europe and America. When the Tate in London asked him to make a work
of art for its huge hall -500 feet long, 75 feet wide, 115 feet tall – he decided
to use miniature art in the form sunflower seeds.
“,,,growing up in China, we had few possessions apart from a bed,
stove, and a table. But even in our darkest days, we might well have
had a little handful of sunflower seeds in our pockets.”
In addition, Mao’s China used sunflowers as a symbolic stand-in for people.
So he proposed to cover the huge floor of the hall with a bed of 100 million
hand made ceramic sunflower seeds.
Continuing his protests at home, he was thwarted at every turn by the
government – constant surveillance, travel bans, house arrest, then prison.
He was released on bail, and instructed not to leave Beijing, not to go online,
and not to communicate with the media. His Twitter followers launched on
online campaign to “Free Ai WeiWei” which was echoed internationally.
Heads of state, including Hillary Clinton, pled his case to Chinese authorities.
Continuing to protest – through art, social media, a rock song – he stated:
“If you’re not prepared to make a name for yourself through resistance,
the only way to win distinction is through bowing and scraping.”
And we was not willing to bow and scrape.
After four years of house arrest, his passport was returned and he left for
one of his exhibits in Berlin. From there, he went to another exhibit in the UK,
where he relocated. He likens his situation to the millions of refugees world
wide. He turned his attention to the refugee world, creating art and
documentaries about them, in whom saw himself and his family.
“When a man mets adversity, he yearns for the next generation to
be spared the same hardships. My father, my son, and I have all ended
up on the same path, leaving the land where we were born.
…without a sense of belonging, my language lost, I feel on edge and
unsure about things, facing an equally anxious world.”
APPLY:
Identify a group you identify with.
Take one action to support them.
1000 Years of Joys ad Sorrows, A Memoir, Ai WeiWei, Crown, New York, 2021.
