Art History

Art History

Ai Weiwei

7/12/15

Ai Weiwei was a is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist who currently resides and works in Beijing. He was held for 81 days without any official charges being filed at Beijing Capital International Airport. The reasons for his arrest are widely disputed,  the Chinese Government themselves put out a status that it was for tax evasion. 

Ai Weiwei's treatment while imprisoned was what he considered psychological warfare. 

He is highly and openly critical of the Chinese Governments stand on democracy and human rights.

When arrested, Ai Weiwei lost his passport, and everyday since, outside of his studio he places a bike with flowers in the basket, which he changes everyday.

The dispute between Ai Weiwei and the Government, however, doesn't impede on his career, since the Government themselves made him a consultant for the Beijing Olympic Stadium.

Sunflower Seeds
2010 - 2011

'Sunflower Seeds' was initially part of a commission for the Tate. There were over 100,000,000 hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds, which weighed over 150 tonnes. It covered the 1,000 square feet of the Tate Modern Turbine hall, and was 10 centimeters in depth. It took over 1,600 artisans in the town of Jingdezhen, where imperial porcelain was made for over a thousand years. It took two and a half years and a 30 step procedure for each sunflower seed to be crafted, painted and fired, and was, according to Ai Weiwei, one of the most costly art pieces among all art pieces, Chinese and Western.

There are many meanings behind the sunflower seeds. They remind Ai Weiwei of the hardships and hunger of the cultural revolution, as they were a common street snack.

For him, the 100 million sunflower seeds are 100 million pieces of art. Every single seed has something different about it, just like the artisans in Jingdezhan, who crafted the sunflower seeds, and just like the 1.3 billion people in China. Through using the sunflower seed, he creates a domino affect, which enlarges the lengthy and complicated process by 100 million times. By devoting patience, he gathers together 100 million individuals, and shows how strong they are together. 

Ai Weiwei began making investigations into the Government corruption and cover - up's, in particular, the Sichuan school corruption scandal, that followed the so called 'tofu drew school' in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

When he had heard about the earthquakes, and what had happened, he immediately went to the site of the collapsed buildings. He wanted to know how many people had died and of what age they were. After walking around, he began to notice all of the backpacks. This launched his campaign to find out who had died within the earthquake.

People volunteered to help. Over 40 groups were sent out in order to find out who had died, and most of them got arrested. 

Out of this came many pieces of artwork, in particular, two huge installations. 

In Germany, he created a 10 meter by 100 meter installation of the side of the 'Haus Der Kunst'. Each backpack within the piece represented a life lost in the tofu dreg school corruption scandal. 

The piece was made after the mother of one of the earthquake victims asked to commemorate her daughter. The piece was made up of 5 colours, and in chinese writing, it read 'for seven years she lived happily on this earth'

Remembering
2009

The second piece was an installation called straight, which included over 150 tonnes of steel bars that he had bought and then straightened from the Sichuan earthquake tofu dreg school collapse. he had numerous people help him with straightening the bars, however, half way through the process, he was arrested. 

Upon getting back from his 81 day imprisonment, he arrived back at his stdio to find people still working on the bars. Along with this installation is a wall behind it with the names of every student who died in the collapse. 

Straight