Ai Weiwei is a contemporary Chinese artist. His art is quite controversial and is often strongly based around philosophies and ideologies of politics and social structures. He is immensely passionate about the unprecedented growth and change in Beijing. One of Ai Weiwei’s works called Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn(1995) involves a triptych of him dropping an ancient Chinese dynasty urn. The first shot could be described as a reference to the urn’s survival in the present moment. The second is a gesture of letting go of history and cultural constructs. The third, where the urn smashes on the ground, is similar to the second. Ai is expressionless and emotionless with no shock evident on his face. This leaves the viewer to determine the value of the urn through their reaction to the destruction.
Another work Ai has done with an ancient dynasty urn is Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo(1994). He has painted a Coca Cola logo in red on it. Ai is critically engaged with the history and material of clay. The logo causes the urn to lose its authenticity. Ai ‘challenges the distinction between high and low culture and points to their commodity-based affiliation.’(1)
Ai’s Study of Perspective series is one of his more controversial works. Photos depict Ai sticking his middle finger up at several iconic personifications of authority. The gesture is directed at architectural monuments associated with state power and national identity. The perspective in the works is that Ai’s finger is of significant size in comparison to these monuments lets us question the individual’s opinion and feeling compared to the values, rules and constructs these monuments represent.
Ai Weiwei was the designer of the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympic games last year. This seems quite contradictory considering Ai outwardly opposes the Olympics but said that he did the project because he loves design. He said ‘The Olympics is far from the will of the people and the spirit of freedom, a national ceremony without the inspiration of the citizenry, a myth so far away from modern civilisation, the end will be endless nonsense and a bore.’(2)
I went to the White Rabbit Gallery a few weeks ago and was able to see a work by Ai Oil Spills(2006) in the current exhibition. It is a hyper-real installation of oil slicks made from glazed porcelain. The work is said to be about international trade and how some goods can be both damaging and productive.
Forever Bicycles is a work by Ai which is the complete abstraction of bicycles into a useless geometric construction. ‘By transforming an iconic object of Chinese life into a cog in a gigantic geometric structure. Pointedly abstracting it of any content.’(3) It could also be about how peoples lives become an impersonal object of manipulation i.e. in communism. It plays off the name of the bicycle company ‘Forever’. The bicycle is a symbol of the peasant revolution and socialist utopia turns out to be going no where. ‘It may be forever, but if it is to be called revolution, it is only insofar as the wheel revolves in the perpetual circularity of a fixed movement.’(4)
‘Ai Weiwei is a producer and maker of fairytales and those indestructible things that communities are built upon. Through his work we have the opportunity to remember.’ – Charles Merewether.(5)
1. Charles Merewether, Ai Weiwei: Under Construction. (Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2008).
2.Ibid
3.Ibid
4.Ibid
5.Ibid
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Merewether, Charles. Ai Weiwei: Under Construction. Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2008.
Higgie, Jennifer. "United Technologies". Frieze Magazine (2009), http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/united_technologies (accessed October 10, 2009).
Tinari, Philip; Pakesch, Peter; Merewether, Charles; edited by Meile, Urs. Ai Weiwei Works 2004-2007. Beijing-Lucerne: Gallery Urs Meile, 2007.
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