Chinese artist ai weiwei biography books

Serpentine Pavilion [ edit ]. Books [ edit ]. Venice Elegy [ edit ]. Traces of Survival [ edit ]. Zodiac [ edit ]. Music [ edit ]. Other engagements [ edit ]. Awards and honors [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Ai, Weiwei; Pins, Anthony. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN OCLC Current Biography Yearbook Ipswich, MA: H.

Archived from the original on 26 September Retrieved 4 October Groninger Museum. Archived from the original on 26 May Retrieved 6 July Ai Weiwei, " According to What? Archived from the original on 13 July Retrieved 13 July The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 18 January Retrieved 17 January Cornell University.

Archived from the original on 6 October Retrieved 17 May Ai Weiwei Speaks. London: Penguin. Blackjack Players". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 April Retrieved 22 June Archived from the original on 6 July Archived from the original on 11 August The Age. Archived from the original on 25 January Ai Weiwei: Works Beijing — Timezone 8.

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Chinese artist ai weiwei biography books

Archived from the original on 29 September Archived from the original on 8 November Lancashire Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 November SBS News. At once ambitious and intimate, Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

Born in , he lives in Cambridge, UK. He teaches Chinese at Pomona College in California. The art is complex and driven by concepts and history and a respect for the efficacy of the object and the image. The art attempts to arrange historical facts and traditions within modern contexts, in order to speak of what is lost and gained in periods of great transition, how men relate to the raw material of their surroundings, and how these relations either elevate the individual life or feed dehumanizing power structures.

Take one of my favorite pieces in the exhibit, Moon Chest , a series of 81 foot tall chests made of huali wood, a fine wood coveted by wealthy Chinese. Seven of them are shown at the Hirshhorn. How do we choose to use the materials at our hands? What do we make of the world around us and how do we see ourselves in relation to this society, this world?

Ai Weiwei wants us to see materials not as products of market and economy, but full with all their historical and spiritual essence. He wants us to look at the dignity of the individual creating the thing, and how the individual is compensated by that creation, shaped by their work, evolved in body and soul by modern World-forces that often feel ineffable, inevitable.

This liberation of persons and things is attained through the arts, through creative processes that do not demean the human, but fulfill the individual. It is a process that turns nothing into something. On the other, acting on thoughtless impulse is doomed to failure. Our ancestors understood this quite well. The relationship between thought and action is the most important source of human wisdom and joy.

With both, the process of turning art into reality is the path to happiness. Only through this process can we understand who we are. So the game will continue. Ike Rakiecki. I found the book's interview with Weiwei to be especially insightful as it distilled his philosophies on social activism and art. Many of his pieces are large-scale constructions meant to point out social injustices.

The fact that he uses centuries-old materials in some of his installations was especially cool. After seeing Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I am now enamored with him as an artist AND as an activist who lives out his convictions in much more challenging circumstances than I could ever imagine. This catalog is a great introduction to the pieces included in the traveling exhibit, and has inspired me to read and watch and find out much more about Ai.

I am glad of that visit, because without the experience of and impression left by the artworks themselves, this catalog wouldn't couldn't do the artist justice, although it does provide a sense of his talent, versatility, and impact. This book is a powerful memento of a visit to the exhibition, but is in no way a substitution, since so many of the artist's works rely on senses other than the visual to fully appreciate.

For Ai, a Beijing native, they evoked happy memories of wandering the city with friends. By , however, due to a series of fines, arrests, and brutal beatings, he was essentially a prisoner in his own city. In this light, his seeds, cast on the ground, evoke an oppressed, downtrodden society, far from the ideal that Mao described. In the Beijing police installed security cameras in his home and studio.

These track him from room to room, and even outside. They also closely monitor his posts on Twitter and Instagram, as the artist put it: "In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities. Surveillance Camera , an austere and quite beautiful marble sculpture, reminds us that the artist is watching those who watch him.

Like tea or porcelain, his choice of medium has significance. A surveillance camera in marble literally, set in stone reminds 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 humor about the absurdity of his situation.

In , he set up "Weiwei Cam", broadcasting a live feed and invited his followers to view him at work and going about his business, mimicking the intrusion of Chinese officials into his private life, but here the viewers watch him at his invitation. Authorities quickly shut it down within two days , but it remains a testament to Ai's persistent wit, and unwavering commitment to holding his government publicly responsible for its intrusions into the lives of its citizens.

Cast in black and red the colors of the Chinese Communist Party these hard-shelled creatures trample each other. The few that escape the pile seem especially vulnerable. In a visitor accidentally stepped on one and crushed it, an unintended metaphor for the consequences of resistance. Like his Sunflower Seeds , this pile of individually-crafted porcelain crabs is a societal metaphor and a scathing indictment of the ruling party.

There is also an autobiographical dimension to the work. A year earlier Ai was informed that his newly built studio would be torn down authorities claimed he had not had the right permit. In response, Ai publicly announced he was holding a feast in celebration of the destruction of his studio. He invited people and ordered 10, crabs.

Officials, who understood but who did not appreciate the gesture, placed the artist under house arrest. While unable to attend the event, he was still able to broadcast it internationally and in near-real time. A scathing metaphor for the absurdity and brutality of a system that oppresses its citizens, this work highlights the theme of resistance in Ai's art.

His father was very well-known in China, and had been imprisoned by the Nationalist government before Ai's birth on suspicion of being a Leftist. After the People's Republic of China was founded, Ai Qing was accused again, this time of being a Rightist, during Chairman Mao's anti-intellectual campaign. The family was exiled when Ai was only one year old.

His father's poetic artistry and the family's precarious political situation were to have a deep effect on the artist. The family lived in exile for twenty years, in small villages near the North Korean border and in the province of Xinjiang, where his father was forced to carry out hard labor, including cleaning communal toilets.

In order to survive as a child, Ai learned many of the practical skills that he would later apply to his art - such as making furniture and bricks. He says of his childhood that "living conditions were extremely harsh, and education was almost non-existent. Ai Qing and his family were allowed to return from exile after Chairman Mao's death in This allowed the 19 year old Ai to enroll in the Beijing Film Academy to study animation.

Within a couple of years, he had started to get involved with the unofficial Beijing art scene, and was one of the first members of The Stars. This was a subversive political group of artists who wanted to reintroduce the idea of art as self-expression to China, after decades of Mao's policy of art serving the communal interests of the state.

He also took part in a number of pro-democracy marches and rallies. In , he moved to the US, studying in piecemeal fashion at various institutions, trying to improve his English. He dropped out after six months, and instead tried to make a living as a street artist and odd-jobber. Ai stayed in New York for 11 years, immersing himself in the contemporary art scene and taking photographs of the city, which would later be put together as a work known as the New York Photographs He also met and befriended the beat poet Allen Ginsberg , who had once traveled to China and met Ai's father.

During this period he also traveled round the US, and became interested in the game of blackjack being played in Atlantic City casinos. He became so adept at the game that US blackjack players know him first and foremost as a professional gambler, rather than as an artist. Five years later his father became ill and he returned to Beijing.

While there, he produced three books on interviews with some of his favorite Western artists, including Marcel Duchamp , Andy Warhol , and Jeff Koons , and drew connections between this older generation of artists and an emerging generation of iconoclasts which included himself in Beijing. In , his father passed away. Ai has identified his father as the single most important influence on his life.

Delving more deeply into a traditional Chinese practice that he had learned from his father, he spent the last half of that decade making furniture. Despite no formal training in architecture, in he built himself a house and studio in north Beijing, and in founded an architectural practice called FAKE Design. The year was a turning point in Ai's life and career.

He was chosen to represent China at the Venice Biennale a mark of high honor and geo-political distinction , a development that lifted him into a high-visibility role in the international arena. This got the attention of the Chinese government, and not in a good way. In order to understand the impact of this exhibition, it is crucial to know a little bit about the state-sanctioned art of Beijing, dominant since the s.

The unstated, but relatively strictly-enforced guidelines were that art should be representational, respectful, and celebrates the lives of everyday people thriving under Communism in a manner consistent with Western Realism - but mostly known internationally as Soviet Socialist Realism. Ai has always been a political activist. Since , however, his visibility in the public eye, both in the West and in China, has been seen as an active threat by Chinese government officials.

Drastic efforts on the part of the government to limit his communication with broad audiences has, somewhat paradoxically, motivated him toward a number of ambitious projects designed to address directly politically sensitive themes in China, such as the internet subject to government regulations that limit access to many websites, including Google, that many in the world otherwise take for granted.

In , he began to express himself via a blog, which he was invited to start by the Chinese internet firm Sina.