The best art news of summer 2015: Ai Weiwei is in Germany!

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei landed at Munich Airport on Thursday, July 30, 2015, at 4:50 p.m.

After a 14.5-hour direct flight from Beijing – Ai Weiwei's first trip abroad since he was unexpectedly arrested at this very Beijing airport on April 3, 2011, because China's rulers finally wanted to silence the regime-critical artist.

The government also wanted to have Ai Weiwei under direct control, so he was first abducted to an unknown location and held there for 81 days without any trace of due process, with justifications that were as flimsy as they were obviously untenable.

Subsequently, the Chinese authorities – also contrary to any idea of ​​the rule of law and human dignity – imposed a “house arrest” on the artist, depriving him of his passport and thus the possibility of moving about like a free person.

During these 1,579 days, the Chinese regime has not succeeded in silencing or controlling the artist.

During these 4 years and 4 months – made possible by supporters from all over the world – Ai Weiwei created and exhibited art, drew attention to his fate in documentaries, wrote and published.

Some of the activities of him and the people around him can be read about here in the articles “Ai Weiwei and 'The Fake Case' ”, “Ai Weiwei – Art and Uproar of an Unyielding Man” and “Ai Weiwei – Never Sorry about Oppression” – and in any state-run media outlet you will find several reports that during the 136,425,600 seconds of his captivity, Ai Weiwei never once considered apologizing for exposing the oppression in China.

Ai Weiwei was met at Munich Airport by his son, who has been living with his mother in Berlin for a year as a precaution, due to the artist's justified fear of the unpredictability of the Chinese regime.

Ai Weiwei will arrive in Berlin in a few days, and Berliners are looking forward to his arrival. Not only do his six-year-old son Ai Lao and his mother Wang Fen live here, but he is also represented by the Neugerriemschneider Gallery ( www.neugerriemschneider.com three-year visiting professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts has been waiting for him here since April 2011 .

Ai Weiwei was admitted to the Academy of Arts Berlin in early June 2011, at that time dependent on his consent, which he gladly gave after his “release” from house arrest; just in February 2015, during the Berlinale, Ai Weiwei remotely directed an approximately eight-minute segment for the episodic film “Berlin, I Love You” (Director Oren Moverman, Producers Claus Clausen and Josef Steinberger, since 2012 and still in development).

You can find more interesting information and background on the Chinese artist's visit to Germany here:

-> DW – Ai Weiwei is in Germany

Between receiving his passport on July 22nd and arriving in Germany on July 31st, Ai Weiwei had to endure an unpleasant interlude – he was threatened with further injustice precisely because he had already experienced unlawful treatment previously.

Ai Weiwei had applied for a visa to London to see his daughter and attend his upcoming exhibition there, but it was denied by the British Embassy in Beijing because he had failed to disclose his criminal record. A criminal record resulting from actions by the Chinese government that violate human dignity and many other fundamental principles of the rule of law…

Meanwhile, a representative of the British government, more committed to the idea of ​​the rule of law, reviewed the rejection and Ai Weiwei received his visa.

This nightmare of injustice perpetuated through generations appears to be an inherent phenomenon of bureaucracy. Time and again, there are reports of the fate of people whose entire existence was jeopardized or even destroyed because an injustice at the very beginning of a chain of events led to or spawned further injustices.

Here, it is the artist, threatened/harmed by state power exercised arbitrarily and against human rights, who is to be denied a visa by the next, supposedly more law-abiding state power, with reference to the previous injustice.

In some village in Germany, it is the underage asylum seeker who, in a highly controversial procedure, is classified as an adult and from now on is deprived of the protective rights to which a child is entitled in every subsequent bureaucratic decision.

In some community in Germany, a friendly person helps a friend who has unexpectedly become homeless and is suddenly classified by the social welfare office as a community of need together with this friend – a collective punishment justified by the actual help and from which escape is very difficult.

In some city in Germany, the person harmed by a miscarriage of justice has no chance after this verdict because the justice system does not correct its own mistakes… these are examples from a state governed by the rule of law; in the numerous states on our planet that are not recognized as states governed by the rule of law, things are even better or considerably worse for the person affected.

The decision regarding Ai Weiwei's visa was reversed because he is prominent enough that there is no reason for envy among less prominent individuals affected: Ai Weiwei has been waging a hard and dangerous battle for years/decades with precisely the goal of ensuring that all people in the world receive their rights…

If you would like to congratulate Ai Weiwei on having the courage and strength to stand up against injustice for so long, and on his partial victory in regaining his freedom after years of persecution: twitter @aiww , instagram.com/aiww .

There are many photos of Ai Weiwei and his son on Instagram; on Friday, July 31, 2015 (probably at the exact time this article was written), the photo was posted showing a visibly exhausted but relaxed Ai Weiwei with his equally visibly happy son in the swimming pool.

What do you wish for him? Three years of “break in a state governed by the rule of law,” as a visiting professor at the UdK, then a return to China, to a regime where he is not safe? Or denaturalization by the Chinese authorities, a life filled with longing for his homeland in Germany, with unhindered artistic creation and his son, and without further harassment, but certainly not without continued personal commitment to upholding human rights in our world?