Celebrity Life

Is the name ringing any bells? Well, it should for Ai Weiwei is a Chinese dissident and provocative artist, with works indelibly tied to the fight for free speech. He is also the artistic consultant who designed the iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium from the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but later spoke against it: “The Bird's Nest National Stadium, which I helped to conceive, is designed to embody the Olympic spirit of "fair competition". It tells people that freedom is possible but needs fairness, courage and strength. However, almost 60 years after the founding of the People's Republic, we still live under autocratic rule without universal suffrage. We do not have an open media even though freedom of expression is more valuable than life itself.”

In conjunction to Refutation, Ai’s second solo exhibition, which will be held from 26 March to 30 April 2018 at the gallery’s new space in H Queen’s, Prestige Malaysia has picked 5 of his larger than life works that deliberately confront the viewer with their message.

Read also : 8 feminist artists to know

[caption id="attachment_77425" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] (Bottom to Top): "Colored Vases", 2007-10, and "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn", 1995/2009, top, are part of the exhibit at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden entitled, "Ai Weiwei: According to What?" | Photo by Matt McClain[/caption]

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995)

One of his earlier works, Ai dropped and smashed a 2000-year old ceremonial urn right outside his mother's home in Beijing. What’s more shocking is that the artist paid the equivalent of several thousand US dollars for the artefact, which has an incredible symbolic and cultural worth. It is clear that the Han dynasty is considered a defining moment in Chinese civilization, thus understandably, antique dealers were outraged, calling Ai's work an act of desecration. However, Ai countered by saying "General Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one." It was a provocative act of cultural destruction in reference to the erasure of cultural memory in Communist China, an anti-elite society that carefully monitored access to information, especially about its dynastic history.

[caption id="attachment_77421" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Chinese artist Ai Weiwei poses with his work "Straight" during a press preview at the Royal Academy in London | Photo by Leon Neal[/caption]

Straight (2008-2012)

The work consists of 150 tons of steel rebar that the artist and his team painstakingly collected from the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The tragic event took the lives of more than 5000 school children, all crushed when their government-constructed “tofu-skin school” collapsed. Each rebar, varying in diameter, had been used to reinforce the concrete walls of the schools, serves as a forceful testament to the government’s responsibility for the tragedy when displayed on the gallery floor. The concept of straightening the retrieved metal parts as if new is also seen as an act of adjusting the pieces in a way metaphorically speaking of the artist trying to make things right. The sculptural installation was presented at the 2013 Venice art biennale.

[caption id="attachment_77422" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] People walk underneath a sculpture made of backpacks by Ai Weiwei called, "Snake Ceiling" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass | Photo by Jessica Rinaldi[/caption]

Snake Bag

Rebar was not the only thing Ai collected during his visit to the site of the Sichuan earthquake; children’s backpacks were scattered in the rubble as well, a tangible symbol of the boys and girls whose lives had been cut short. The Snake Bag, which is 55-foot-long and uses 360 children's backpack, was also created out of Ai’s frustration that the government officials refused to release the number of deaths or acknowledge any accountability. Through this work, he hopes to memorialize the children of Sichuan to ensure that neither their deaths nor the devastation would be forgotten. For that, Ai undertook an investigation of the Chinese government’s attempted cover-up of the incident, with violent consequences. He was not only severely beaten by Sichuan police to prevent him from testifying at the trial of fellow researcher Tan Zuoren, Ai also spending 81 days in illegal detention in 2011.

[caption id="attachment_77424" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei holds some seeds from his Unilever Installation 'Sunflower Seeds' at The Tate Modern in London, England | Photo by Peter Macdiarmid[/caption]

Sunflower Seeds (2010)

In 2010, Ai filled the enormous Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern with exactly 100,000,000 porcelain sunflower seeds, each made by a craftsman from the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Porcelain is an important substance made for export that has long sustained the Chinese economy whereas the sunflower is an important Chinese communist symbol. While the meaning of this work remains an open question, the label "Made in China" will never look quite the same. Questions about how it was made led the audience to a greater understanding of contemporary mass-manufacturing practices in China. Much is still made by hand in an economy where machines are expensive and labour (and human life in general) is cheap. The artwork, cast on the ground, therefore, evoke an oppressed, downtrodden society, far from the ideal that Chairman Mao once described and promised. The piece is a clever pretext for calling attention to a politically sensitive issue.

[caption id="attachment_77426" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The sculpture 'Surveillance Camera' made of marble in 2010 is displayed as part of the exhibition 'Evidence' at the Martin-Gropius Bau museum in Berlin | Photo by Johannes Eisele[/caption]

Surveillance Camera (2010)

Apart from a series of fines, arrests, and brutal beatings, the Beijing police also installed security cameras in Ai’s home and studio in 2011. He became a prisoner in his own city and home. Constantly under surveillance, even his slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities. The artist, in turn, created Surveillance Camera, an austere and quite beautiful marble sculpture, reminding us of the omnipresence of this feature in Ai's life, as well as its role as a stand in for an authority, like the statue of a Roman emperor. Set on a plinth at eye level, the resemblance of the shape to a head and shoulders is a visual twist characteristic of Ai's broader sense of humour about the absurdity of his situation.

Refutation | Ai Weiwei
Curator: Cui Cancan
26 March to 30 April 2018
Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong

The Refutation opening reception will be held from 26 March to 30 April 2018 at the gallery’s new space in H Queen’s

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