“Weiwei, you know, we treat you like this not because you are a bad guy. It is just that you have too much influence on people”
“Come to think who made me this influential. Read into the history of any hero; the hero does not become a hero, unless there is a monster”.
Ai Weiwei has long gone beyond the definition of “Chinese artist”. Back in the 1980s, when he was a part of the “Starts” movement, he openly criticized the Chinese government. Because of his constant issues with authorities, Ai Weiwei balances the pressures to be both a provocative international artist and a mobile Chinese citizen (Evan Osnos). As well because of political oppression, he moved to New York and lived there until 1993. There he studied at the School of Design and learning how does art work in the West. In other words, all the conceptual techniques that Ai uses in today’s works, have roots in European or American art of XX century, but are applied to the Chinese culture. Ai Weiwei often uses traditional Chinese techniques – that makes his art unique and special. Add to this the constant political context; work with categories of mass and totality, impressive variability of the media used to create his artworks, and one cannot be surprised by Ai Weiwei’s first place in the list of “Hundred most influential people in the art world” in the Art Review magazine, or his 24th place of a similar list in the “Time” magazine.
Ai Weiwei’s installations and art pieces have tendencies of conceptualism and pop art. Sometimes his works may be seen as barbaric (referring to Ai smashing a 2,000-year-old Han Dynasty urn on the pavement (Aloi, Daniel)) but they all have a very deep underlying context. His deep understanding of unfairness and unbending core made him flee his country, but this is the reason he is one of the most renowned contemporary artists in the world. “I have to speak for the people who are afraid” – he likes to say (Maev Kennedy).
For this paper, I have chosen three works of the master. They are different in their main idea, but they all have one thing in common – they share a sense of individual and collective. In the “Rooted upon” there is a grieve of every person for the whole generation of lost history. In the “Fairytale”, there is a story behind every person, but it reflects the hopelessness of the whole nation. In the “Bicycles Forever” (and its various interpretations), there is a demonstration of an individual object in the scale of mass production and over-consumption. Below, I will take a closer look at each of installation.
Rooted Upon
Different generations of Chinese artists worry about similar problems. They talk about the massive resettlement of population in the big cities and the loss of cultural roots.
Imagine a very large room, full of gigantic beige to brown tree roots. They are the roots of Chinese trees that grew in hard rocky soil, and their roots acquired a whimsical, almost mystical form. They are placed randomly in the room and it feels like you are walking in an enchanted forest. Roots are so large that they make you feel small. When you first walk into the room, you get a sense of doom. There is a cloud of tragedy over this massive installation. Roots seem like monsters that gathered to teach you a lesson. When asked, “Why there are so many trees?” Ai Weiwei answered: “Well, I had to fill the large exhibition rooms”.
So what does this installation tell us? Of course, not that Ai Weiwei has mastered the art of polishing roots. In fact, a whole factory did it for him. The project is about how China erases its history, depriving its people of roots. Now in China, it is assumed that history is that what is happening now. That is why you will not find in China monuments, historical of religious records, like there are, for example in Nepal or Tibet. Their place is taken by the “modern history” of China, which began with the economic recovery in 1980s. What was before – not meant to be remembered. Three “T” – Tibet (1959), Taiwan (1949), Tiananmen Square (1989) – three issues that are not to be discussed in the media. The history of now deprived us of the past and this is the main point of the “Rooted Upon”.
In the installation, not only do we see parts of trees, we see recollections of the past. The forgotten past that is beyond the returning point. It is a story about a society that has lost connection with its own history. It is a story about a lost identity of a whole generation and about search for personal identity.
Bicycles Forever
In different exhibition rooms of the world there were different amounts of bicycles and different configuration of the installation, however it is not difficult to imagine a room full of identical bicycles. They either are piled on each other or are placed in a circle, or in a form of a labyrinth or a skyscraper. The bottom line is that once in such room, you find yourself trapped in a repetitive chain that smells like fresh rubber. Feeling is strange and at first, it seems like a very strange installation. Like most contemporary art pieces, it needs explanation to get you started.
The installation was inspired and created in the name of Yang Jia, a 28-year old resident of Shanghai, who was detained by police for allegedly riding an unregistered bike. As a result, of the conflict, six police officers were killed and Yang Jia was sentenced to death. Ai Weiwei criticizes the lack of transparency and the injustice of the Chinese judicial system, which the artist had to face himself more than once. The same thing happened to the artist when he decided to undertake his own investigation of the circumstances of the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which resulted in deaths of many people. In his blog, Ai Weiwei published statistics and names of dead that were not included in the official statistics, that pointed fingers at the corruption in the construction business. When trying to address the court in support of the administration of Sichuan human rights activists, Ai Weiwei was severely beaten by the police.
Back to art, the bicycles that form the installation are made by “Forever” brand- ubiquitous bike brand that has been mass-produced in Shanghai since 1940 (Alanna Martinez). Using bicycles Ai Weiwei addresses, of course, to the traditional mode of transportation in China (Alanna Martinez). However, if you come to China now, you see that it has changed – people have cars and there are many of them. Although, bicycles remain popular among the poor population, there is an inevitable sense of loss of cultural identity. How bicycles are replaced by cars, traditional things are replaced by global. The number of bicycles (that varies from exhibition to exhibition) demonstrates mass production, for which China is famous in the world. They also symbolize the constant movement. Of goods, people, economy, politics. Movement is vital. The question which direction does it take.
Fairytale
Project Fairytale consists of a large number of squared pictures, glued buy-in-butt on the walls of the gallery, so that they evenly cover its walls with a rhythmic pattern. The pictures show different Chinese people, in full length, standing quietly and looking in the camera. Each picture – new person. Photos themselves have no artistic value. When you first walk into the room of the gallery, it seems like a not-so-interesting installation. Photographs seem dull and people are not that extraordinary. However, once you know the idea behind the artwork, it all appears in different light. People seem to start telling you their each individual story. Which is funny, since at first they all seem like a whole image. At first, you don’t think of them as individuals. Perhaps, this is intentional. It demonstrates us how often do we forget about the people in the picture.
So, what does Weiwei intend to capture? Key to understanding lies in understanding what does the artist work with? He works with the modern context, problems of contemporary (to him) society. Project can be performed through variety of ways – photography, installation, video art, performance, etc. Photography (as in this case) – is only a means of communicating messages, i.e. media of contemporary art. Each individual photography has no importance. It is just a piece of a whole. It is only a means. It does not matter whether the photograph is beautiful, how juicy is the grass, what height are the mountains and what color is the sunset. All that you like in photography and seemed so obvious, does not exist in contemporary photography. The category “pretty” is irrelevant to contemporary photography. However, we should understand that it did not just become “un-pretty”, just that this category of evaluation is no longer applicable. As if we were to evaluate yogurt by “pretty/un-pretty”. It is another thing that is important in yogurt. It applies to photography as well.
So let us bring all the photographs of Ai Weiwei’s “Fairytale” and our knowledge of China together. There are many similar black and white pictures, rhythmically arranged in rows on the walls of the gallery. Of course, it depicts the multi-million Chinese people that consists of individuals, among which it is different to find the difference. The choice of black and white is also no accident. It portrays the routine life of ordinary people.
There is a story behind the installation. At its first presentation in 2007, Ai Weiwei brought from China to Germany 1001 readers of his blog – his poor compatriots that otherwise would have never travelled outside China. He paid for their trip and the stay and even the suitcases. He made a personal “Fairytale” for each individual and documented results of the journey – which we witness in the installation.
These three works teach us about collective and individual. Perhaps there is no other country like China that could serve a better example to this phenomenon. Interestingly, that so many issues can be seen through the perspective of a person and the people.
Apart from this, Ai Weiwei talks about the struggle of the future and the past as the ever-topical issue in the history of China, since the decade of “cultural revolution”. Ai Weiwei gives Chinese features to minimalism: where else if not in China, aesthetics of the ordered multiplicity can have such an obvious socio-political meaning.
Works Cited
Evan Osnos. Ai Weiwei and the law. The New Yorker. 7 April 2011. Web.
Weiwei, Ai. Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009. Ed Lee
Ambrozy. MIT Press, 2011. Web.
Maev Kennedy. Ai Weiwei fills Yorkshire chapel with symbols of his persecution. The
Guardian. 22 May 2014. Web.
Alanna Martinez. Weiwei to stach a tower of bicycles in front of London’s Gherkin building.
The Observer. 26 August. 2015. Web.
Aloi, Daniel. Ai Weiwei literally smashes China's traditions in art and architecture". Cornell
