Ai Weiwei – Art and Uproar of an Unyielding Man

Who is Ai Weiwei?

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous artist , even though, or perhaps precisely because, he is not among those artists suited to dismantling the Chinese authorities' fundamental distrust of free, contemporary art. According to the Artfacts list , Ai Weiwei is indeed quite famous, currently ranked 130th in the world, and climbing in that position.

For those interested in politics and society, it might even rank slightly higher than the number 1 in the world; 50-95 percent courage, 50-95 percent will to democracy, and 50-95 percent artistic creativity with corresponding results (50-95 because the author does not presume to make a judgment here) add up to more than 100 percent.

Read more about the difficult artistic life of an amazing man:

Ai Weiwei is an artist name

Ai Weiwei's real name is simply Ai; "Weiwei" is his artist name, which already hints at his political work. Weiwei translates as "double negative ," a fitting name for a collaborator and critic.

Since his arrest sparked worldwide protests and created a new sense of unity between citizens, politicians and artists in China, his followers also gave him a nickname, “Ai Shen” , which translates as “God of Love”, for his tireless efforts on behalf of the oppressed and disenfranchised.

Ai Weiwei's birthday

Ai Weiwei was born on August 28, 1957.

Remember the birthday? The space age began in 1957 – the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 reached Earth orbit that year, exactly one week after Ai Weiwei's birth. The European Union (EU) was also launched in 1957 with the signing of the Treaties of Rome, which came into force on January 1, 1958.

Furthermore, a lot of interesting people were born in 1957, e.g. Walter Moers (Captain Bluebear, The Little Asshole), Frank Schätzing, Joachim Król, Ulrich Tukur, Gloria Estefan, Sabine Christiansen, Ethan Coen and Matthias Reim.

On the same day as Ai Weiwei, August 28th, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born (only 208 years earlier, in 1749).

Ai Weiwei's birthplace

Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China.

However, he was only able to enjoy life in the capital for a very short time – in 1958 his father was banished from the capital as punishment for his opinions and writings, initially to Manchuria.

It lies in northeastern China, not a particularly pleasant region, just before Siberia; this is where little Ai (Ài = “love”) grew up in his early youth. Then they went on to the opposite end of China, to Xinjiang, like Manchuria a region where foxes and hares bid each other goodnight and where people are also excluded from any political or social activity.

Parents and childhood of Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei's parents are the writer and artist Ai Qing and Gao Ying, who has been separated from her husband since his exile; he has a half-brother named Ai Xuan who is 10 years older and a sister named Gao Ge who is 5 years older.

Ai Weiwei's father, the poet and painter Ai Qing, had already turned to the Western world in the 1930s and studied art in Paris. His involvement with a left-wing artists' association led to Ai Qing's first arrest, from 1932 to 1935; his writings on "literary modernism" resulted in a publication ban and exile.

Ai Qing, celebrated today as a co-founder of Chinese "New Poetry," essentially instilled in his son Ai Weiwei an open orientation towards the rest of the world and criticism of the regime, and unfortunately, China is still a country where there is much for a Chinese citizen to criticize.

The father died in 1996, the mother stands firmly behind her son and his political work; at the advanced age of 82, she traveled to Venice to open Ai Weiwei's exhibition SACRED – on behalf of her son, who was denied permission to leave the country by the Chinese authorities.

She also supports Ai Weiwei's work through courageous statements, accusing Chinese officials of persecuting her son and describing their behavior towards him as "creepy, crooked and evil".

His sister Gao Ge, along with his wife Lu Qing, also tirelessly campaigns for the artist; after his arrest in 2011, she gives countless interviews to the international press, while Lu Qing takes care of the studio and art in Beijing and fights on the ground.

The half-brother Ai Xuan , 65, is a painter of Chinese Realism and produces paintings in a style that has its roots in Soviet “Romantic Realism”, with some echoes of the work of the American realist painter Andrew Wyeth, whose work he became acquainted with through the few foreign magazines that circulated among Chinese art students.

He is also famous, but unlike Ai Weiwei, well-regarded in China – he is among the top earners, and the finely painted, large-format portraits of Tibetan nomads by “Master Ai” often trigger fierce bidding wars at auctions. Four million yuan (almost €480,000) is a typical price for Chinese collectors; one painting even sold for 28 million yuan (approximately €3.3 million), the highest price ever achieved in China for the work of a living artist.

Ai Xuan, like Ai Weiwei, lives in Beijing, just minutes away from his brother. The brothers, born to different mothers, are not very close; they are said to have last spoken in 1996, when their father died.

Ai Weiwei's training as an artist

Ai Weiwei originally wanted to become a film director; he enrolled at the Beijing Film Academy in 1978. The Beijing Film Academy had just reopened at that time as part of the normalization of public and social life following the end of the Cultural Revolution, and Ai Weiwei was among the first graduating class.

He studied alongside film director and writer Chen Kaig and director Zhang Yimou, both representatives of the so-called “Fifth Generation” of Chinese cinema , who have contributed greatly to raising the international reputation of Chinese cinema over the last 30 years.

While Chen Kaig, with films like “Yellow Earth” (1984), only broke with the outdated and overly restrictive aesthetic, narrative and political norms of the Chinese cultural establishment to the extent that he put China back on the international map of film art, Zhang Yimou went considerably further.

Although his films were shown at many international film festivals and significantly enhanced the reputation of modern Chinese cinema, the Chinese authorities banned their screening.

Ai Weiwei also worked in this spirit; in 1979 he and others founded the Stars Group, an artist group that rejected “art according to state guidelines” for and in China.

Ai Weiwei's artistic breakthrough

Ai Weiwei's artistic breakthrough did not occur in his home country; he lived in the USA from 1981 to 1993, mostly in New York City, and made a name conceptual art and performance, pop art and Dadaism

Ai Weiwei also pursued his artistic education abroad, graduating from the Parsons School of Design and studying at the Art Students League of New York . In 1993, he returned to Beijing due to his father's illness, and in 1994, he founded the China Art Archives and Warehouse gallery for experimental art . Ai Weiwei then moved to the Dashanzi art district in Beijing, where he still lives today.

Immediately after his return to Beijing, Ai Weiwei published three books in which contemporary Chinese artists were given the opportunity for the first time to explain their working methods: “The Black Cover Book” (1994), “The White Cover Book” (1995), “The Grey Cover Book” , 1997.

What kind of art does Ai Weiwei create?

Ai Weiwei creates conceptual art and works as a sculptor and curator, producing sculptures and installations, design and architectural art; other artistic expressions of this multifaceted artist include paintings and books, films and photographs.

Regardless of the medium, Ai Weiwei's work always aims to comment on the profound changes his homeland has undergone since its economic liberalization. His commentary is highly critical, addressing human rights violations, economic exploitation, and environmental pollution in his country .

Formally, he refers to old artistic traditions of his country, but also to international influences such as the work of Marcel Duchamp , the pioneer of Dadaism and co-founder of conceptual art .

In his installations, Ai Weiwei incorporates familiar objects, antiques and spiritual items, for example, and places them in a new, unusual context.

From 2002 onwards, he worked on the construction of the new Chinese National Stadium the “Bird’s Nest” in reference to a Chinese swallow’s nest .

The design was created in collaboration with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the China Architecture Design & Research Group and Arupsport, and emerged as the winner of the international architectural competition held for this purpose.

Ai Weiwei initially served as artistic advisor to Herzog & de Meuron, but soon began to criticize the project, which he described as megalomaniacal and inadequate due to the disproportionately high cost overruns during construction.

The cost explosion even led to considerations about abandoning the construction project at the time; when the stadium was opened for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 330-meter-long, 220-meter-wide and almost 70-meter-high building had swallowed up construction costs of 3.5 billion yuan (325 million euros).

Ai Weiwei boycotted the opening ceremony of the Games in protest; you can find his explanatory speech in the article “Ai Weiwei – Never Sorry about Oppression” , in which you can learn more about Ai Weiwei’s always creative and always unusual, entertaining and critical art.

Ai Weiwei's art becomes a political protest action

When Ai Weiwei refused to attend the opening ceremony of the National Stadium, he had been creating art in Beijing for almost a decade and a half, art that repeatedly challenged the Chinese authorities. For example, between 2003 and 2005 he made several films that showed nothing but the unimaginable and unhealthy traffic chaos in Beijing, which Ai Weiwei described as “an almost mathematical, unemotional way of showing the powerlessness of people and the blind nature of urban renewal.”.

It's not art that pleases authoritarian rulers, but it pleases oppressed people all the more. When Ai Weiwei started a blog on the internet in 2006, exposing political scandals, he quickly gained millions of readers.

This text about the “new China” did not sit well with the “old guard.” The regime shut down the blog in 2009. When Ai Weiwei continued his advocacy for democracy, intellectual freedom, and human rights, he was arrested during a protest and detained for 81 days, beginning April 3, 2011, in an undisclosed location. When Ai Weiwei was released on June 22, 2011, it was not freedom—he remained under strict conditions and still does not enjoy freedom of movement.

Since then, the artist Ai Weiwei has been a topic in many Western media outlets because he continues to critically and actively engage with China's difficult and hesitant path to democracy.

Because the artist is waging this fight involving himself personally, and now has to, because the Chinese authorities are not letting up and will not allow him to leave the country, he urgently needs this help from representatives of a democratic world.

When he protests, Ai Weiwei also always creates art for us – films and web projects, performances and music – and this is not serious art, but rather very lively and creative works by a man who refuses to be defeated and whose work always makes it clear that he has not yet lost faith in a better China.

You can learn more about the origins of Ai Weiwei's political engagement and the expressions that this political engagement takes in his art in the article “Ai Weiwei – The Fake Case”.

Key exhibitions by Ai Weiwei – an overview

Ai Weiwei has had solo exhibitions in Australia and Belgium, China and Germany, France and Italy, Japan and the USA, and in several other countries. He participated in the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, the Guangzhou Triennial in China in 2002, the Sydney Biennale in 2006, and documenta 12 in 2007.

One of his last projects in freedom was “The Unilever Series: Sunflower Seeds” at the Tate Modern, London in 2010/2011, for which 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds were scattered on the floor of the ex-turbine hall.

The visitors enthusiastically walked through the fine kernels, creating so much abrasion that walking barefoot had to be stopped.

In March 2011, a first comprehensive retrospective of Ai Weiwei's work was supposed to begin in Beijing, but it was postponed because of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (Great Communist Party Assembly), and Ai Weiwei subsequently cancelled the exhibition himself with thanks.

Overall, Ai Weiwei currently (2014) has a record of around 90 exhibitions in the USA, almost 50 in China and Germany and around 20 in Switzerland.

Ai Weiwei has received many awards for his commitment, e.g., in 2013 an award from the Appraisers Association of America for Excellence in the Arts, and honorary membership of the esteemed Royal Academy of Arts of Great Britain that same year.

An important exhibition by Ai Weiwei is opening as this article is being written: “Evidence,” at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin , runs until July 7, 2014. “Evidence” is the world’s largest solo exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s work, and for many art connoisseurs and art lovers, the “art event of the year” in Germany (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Berlin-Kreuzberg, Wed-Mon 10 am-7 pm, April 3 – July 7, 2014). It is already clear that the exhibition will be a huge success in Berlin; in the first three weeks, 55,000 visitors saw the show.

It is no coincidence that this major exhibition is taking place in Berlin; Ai Weiwei has close ties to the city. Before his arrest, he had been planning to acquire a studio in Berlin-Schöneweide, which, alongside his studio in Beijing, was to become the second location for his team. In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was appointed a visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. At the same time, one of the first appeals for Ai Weiwei's release came from Berlin. In early June 2011, Ai Weiwei was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts (subject to his approval, which he declared "with great joy" after his conditional release).

In spring 2014, Ai Weiwei's film "The Fake Case" in cinemas , a Canadian-Danish-British production directed by the award-winning Danish documentary filmmaker Andreas Rosforth Johnsen; for more information, see the article "Ai Weiwei – The Fake Case".

Book recommendation about Ai Weiwei and his struggle

The blog that Ai Weiwei launched online in 2006 was filled with critical texts until the regime shut it down in 2009. During this time, a kind of "foundational text on the new China" . This text is, of course, no longer available online—the Chinese authorities ensured that—but it has been available as a book since 2011.

Ai Weiwei, “Don’t Have Any Illusions About Me” . The Forbidden Blog. Edited by Lee Ambrozy. Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2011.

The direct route to Ai Weiwei

You can get an idea of ​​the artist's work on his official website https://aiweiwei.com

You will also find art, immediately available to view, an incredible flower parade in memory of children killed in an earthquake, and a reference to a project that Ai Weiwei is currently carrying out with Olafur Eliasson , a very exciting moon, no more will be revealed here.

To experience the artist himself, you would still have to travel to China at the moment; neither in Berlin nor two weeks later at the Brooklyn Museum in New York (“Ai Weiwei: According to What?”) was Ai Weiwei able to co-open the exhibitions with his works himself.

The installation in the entrance hall of Art Cologne, which displays a bouquet of flowers for each day that the artist, who is subject to a travel ban, does not receive his passport, was certainly enriched by four bouquets by April 13th…