Ai Weiwei

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Born: 1957

Summary of Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is the most well-known Chinese artist of our day. He raises awareness to massive human rights atrocities as an activist, and as an artist, he broadens the meaning of art to embrace new forms of social involvement. The police beat him up, put him under house arrest, demolished his freshly built studio, and put him under surveillance in a country where free expression is not recognised as a right. He’s seen as a potential danger to “harmonious society.” Revolutionaries were not invented by the West. From prehistoric inebriated monks to contemporary counter-culture artists in Beijing, China has a long history of dissidents, anti-authoritarian originals, and eccentrics. Ai comes from a long history of free-thinkers and authors who have been ostracised by both the right and the left. Ai’s theatrical acts, which range from destroying an antique vase to reading the names of children who died as a result of government incompetence, show the growing divide between the ideal and the real in Chinese culture. He’s also one of the first conceptual artists to embrace social media as a major medium, particularly Instagram and Twitter.

In the 1990s, Ai was an art student in New York. The more blatantly anti-authoritarian and oppositional the comment, the better in this time and location. He subsequently returned to China, where such beliefs are frowned upon. “China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism.” Ai says. He saw the distinction and refused to conform. He is an artist who has risked his life to protect the right to freedom of speech.

Early in his life, Ai worked as a professional blackjack player for a short time. His work is about taking chances (personal, professional, and political). It’s also about pushing the boundaries of liberty. His work is meant to remind us that taking risks is an important part of living in a free society.

Government surveillance, which has recently been a popular issue in modern art, is not some far-fetched concept for Ai, but rather a reality. He has created some of the most insightful work on this modern issue, which is just as significant in current popular culture as the hippies were in the 1960s or the feminists were in the 1970s, despite being under official surveillance for over a decade.

Ai was educated in the West and is well-versed in both Conceptual and Minimalist traditions, which he blends. He is the polar antithesis of Jeff Koons, another well-known contemporary, in his reluctance to please the sight. The work of other global activists, such as David Hammons, Robert Gober, and Doris Salcedo, whose large-scale projects call attention to weighty social issues, breaking free from the confines of the gallery and the museum, and bridging the gap between the visual and the social, are closely aligned with Ai’s pieces in their visual austerity.

Childhood

Ai Weiwei is the son of Gao Ying, a writer, and Ai Qing, a poet. His father was well-known in China and had been imprisoned by the Nationalist government on suspicion of being a Leftist prior to Ai’s birth. During Chairman Mao’s anti-intellectual campaign after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Ai Qing was accused of being a Rightist for the second time. When Ai was just a year old, the family was banished. The artist was profoundly influenced by his father’s literary creativity and the family’s perilous political circumstances.

For the next two decades, the family lived in exile in tiny towns near the North Korean border and in the Xinjiang area, where his father was forced to work hard labour, including cleaning public toilets. Ai learnt many of the practical skills that he would later use to his work as a youngster in order to live, such as building furniture and bricks. “living conditions were extremely harsh, and education was almost non-existent.” he recalls of his boyhood. Ai’s only source of information and education had been a big encyclopaedia, which the family had been permitted to preserve.

Early Life

Following Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, Ai Qing and his family were permitted to return from exile. Ai, who is 19 years old, was able to enrol at the Beijing Film Academy to study animation as a result of this. He became associated with the unofficial Beijing art scene within a few years, and was one of the founding members of The Stars. After decades of Mao’s policy of art serving the communal interests of the state, this was a subversive political group of artists who wished to restore the notion of art as self-expression to China. He has attended other pro-democracy demonstrations and marches.

In 1981, he travelled to the United States, where he studied at several schools in a piecemeal way in order to enhance his English. In 1982, he relocated to New York and enrolled at the Parsons School of Design, where he studied under artist Sean Scully. After six months, he dropped college and attempted to earn a livelihood as a street artist and odd-jobber.

Ai lived in New York for 11 years, immersing himself in the contemporary art scene and photographing the city, which he subsequently compiled into the New York Photographs series (1983-1993). He also met and befriended Allen Ginsberg, a beat poet who had visited China and met Ai’s father.

During this time, he also went around the United States, where he grew interested in the blackjack games offered in Atlantic City casinos. He got so skilled at the game that American blackjack players regard him more as a professional gambler than an artist.

Mid Life

Ai’s first solo exhibition, “Old Shoes, Safe Sex” took place at Art Waves/Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York in 1988. After his father fell unwell five years later, he went to Beijing. During his time in Beijing, he published three volumes based on interviews with some of his favourite Western artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Jeff Koons, and drew parallels between this older generation of artists and a new generation of iconoclasts (including himself).

His father passed away in 1996. Ai considers his father to be the most influential person in his life. He spent the second part of that decade learning more about a traditional Chinese technique he had acquired from his father and manufacturing furniture. Despite having no professional architectural background, he constructed himself a house and studio in north Beijing in 1999 and established FAKE Design in 2003.

In Ai’s life and career, the year 1999 marked a watershed moment. He was selected to represent China at the Venice Biennale (a symbol of great honour and geopolitical distinction), putting him in a high-profile position in the international arena. In the same year, he co-curated the show “F**k off” in Shanghai. The Chinese government was taken aback by this, and not in a good way. To comprehend the significance of this show, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of Beijing’s state-sanctioned art, which has dominated since the 1970s.

Art should be representational, respectful, and celebrates the lives of ordinary people living under Communism in a way compatible with Western Realism – but primarily recognised worldwide as Soviet Socialist Realism – according to unspoken but very rigorous rules.

Ai’s influence in the West is undoubtedly larger than in China, where he remains a divisive figure. He is nearly universally admired in the United States and Europe, both as an artist and a political activist, and has paved the path for a more nuanced understanding of modern Chinese culture in the worldwide community.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

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• Ai Weiwei is the son of Gao Ying, a writer, and Ai Qing, a poet.
• Ai lived in New York for 11 years, immersing himself in the contemporary art scene and photographing the city, which he subsequently compiled into the New York Photographs series (1983-1993).
• He also met and befriended Allen Ginsberg, a beat poet who had visited China and met Ai’s father.
• He was selected to represent China at the Venice Biennale (a symbol of great honour and geopolitical distinction), putting him in a high-profile position in the international arena.
• In the same year, he co-curated the show “F**k off” in Shanghai.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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