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Funny enough, he was so good at blackjack that most American casino players still associate him with the game rather than being an artist.Ai Weiwei – At the Museum of Modern Art, 1987, from the New York Photographs series, 1983–1993. The Sichuan Earthquake of May 2008 flattened about four-fifth of the structures in the region. In fact, he was one of the pioneering members of The Stars, a dissident group of political activists-cum-artists who advocated for the reintroduction of the concept of art as self-expression to China. Ai Weiwei’s philosophy has always revolved around utilizing architecture and art as means of achieving social transformation. By employing them as readymades, Ai strips them of their air of preciousness only to reapply it according to a different system of values. The Longmenshan Fault stretches southwest to the northeast, lengthwise the eastern side of the Longmen Mountains or Longmen Shan and splits the flat Sichuan Basin from the Platea of Tibet. This can be attributed to the heat of the economic boom of China in the 2000s. Ai had to rely on one book – a big encyclopedia – as his sole source of education and formal knowledge. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever This is an edited extract from The Start podcast Ai Weiwei AI WEIWEI photographing himself at a Munich hospital in September 2009, with a bag containing fluid that was surgically removed from his skull. All images by Ai Weiwei studio unless otherwise noted. He used 9000 school backpacks to spell out the words “She lived happily for seven years in this world” in Mandarin. Firstly, from an … A year later, he received the inaugural Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent of the Human Rights Foundation and the International Center of Photography Cornell Capa Award. Ai Weiwei, Remembering, backpacks, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2009. The installation consists of photographs of some of the bunches of flowers Ai Weiwei put in his bicycle basket every day during his travel ban. According to the UN, Asia is the most susceptible to disaster than any other region in the world. Its epicenter was located some 80 kilometers west-northwest of Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, with a focal depth of 19 kilometers. His body is both the literal body of the artist – Ai Weiwei’s physical presence – and also the artist’s body of artworks, a body that is experienced by viewers and participants in his artistic interventions. The scientific community questioned whether the massive weight of water impounded by a reservoir near the earthquake’s epicenter could have had something to do with triggering the temblor.Sichuan Province after 2008 earthquake, China, photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by World Bank Photo Collection. Working in this manner, Ai transforms precious artifacts—treating them as base and valueless by painting, dropping, grinding, or slapping with a logo—into contemporary fine art. However, in 1988, after spending 7 years in the US, he debuted his solo show aptly titled “Old Shoes, Safe Sex” at Art Waves/Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York. During that period, he took a multitude of photos and later condensed them into one of his celebrated works, New York Photos (1983-1993). Ai Weiwei. Following Chairman Mao’s death, Ai and his parents were allowed to come back from exile in 1976, ushering in a new chapter in Ai Weiwei’s life. From sculptures to wall art, and from room-sized installations to tiny pottery, Ai Weiwei’s work is a showcase of creativity that provokes and inspires. Also, there were questions about the official number of death tolls given to children, as the public felt it was too low. Main. The historical and cultural significance of the materials and techniques Ai Weiwei uses are an essential element of almost all his sculptures. Activists who volunteered to help the victims of the quake were jailed under unclear circumstances. For more than a decade, he lived in New York, getting his feet wet in the city’s contemporary art scene and immersing himself in the scenic urban beauty. Earlier in 1999, he made a break into the Chinese art scene when he was picked to represent the country at the Venice Biennale. He became famous worldwide in 2009 thanks to his highly celebrated art project, Remembering, an art piece he created to honor over 80,000 Chinese, most of whom were school children who perished in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Much of his work with ceramics has involved ready-mades: adapting, painting and destroying valuable ancient urns and vases. This, however, didn’t extinguish his zeal and passion for learning. As expected from the communist Chinese government, the Qing family was exiled when Ai Weiwei was barely a year-old. Since his detainment, Ai has been kept under constant surveillance by the government—a circumstance that has led him to create a series of new works. When he wanted to move out of his mother’s house, he needed a place of his own. Sadly, his father became ill and he had to go back to China to look after him. After a few scuffles with the ruling regime, Ai moved to the United States in 1981. Wei also stated that the government was sympathetic to the parents who had lost their children in the disaster. The tremor was caused by the collision of the Eurasian plates and the Indian-Australian plates along the 249-kilometer- (155-mile-) long Longmenshan Fault thrust fault that the stresses created by the northward-moving Indian-Australian plate shifted a piece of the Plateau of Tibet towards the east. It took 1,600 artisans over two years to make the seeds, which were created out of the kaolin from local mountains, hand-painted and fired at 1,300 … Courtesy the artist and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Born in Beijing, China His father was the revolutionary poet, Ai Qing Raised in a labor camp in the province of Xinjiang, China Attended Beijing Film Academy in 1978 Source: Lovell, S. … At this juncture, at the age of 19, he joined the Beijing Film Academy, where he studied animation. Your email address will not be published. Some of the NGOs were already involved in responding to simultaneous disasters in neighboring countries, such as Cyclone Nargis, which made landfall in the neighboring state of Myanmar ten days earlier. In the past 25 years, Ai has come to acclaim for his large-scale installations, political activism and frenetic online presence. The Chinese government later supplied charges of tax evasion against Ai, which he vehemently denies. 'The historical and cultural significance of the materials and techniques Ai Weiwei uses are an essential element of almost all his sculptures.'. Ai Weiwei is unmistakably one of the most influential and equally controversial Chinese artists in recent history. In the aftermath of the earthquake, more than 69,000 people lost their lives, 68,636 being from Sichuan province. The story behind the installation, however, might be hard to swallow.if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-publicdelivery_org-box-4-0')}; In the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, many school buildings were destroyed, killing thousands of children. Read More With China’s economy experiencing a boom during this period in time, many might have felt that the government had full capacity to respond to the earthquake. He was born on 28 August 1957 to a poet father, Ai Qing, and a writer mother, Gao Ying. This was not the case with the Sichuan Earthquake, where the government mainly led the response, and very little international help was provided. Even in his life as a child, his father’s poetic creativity and his family’s political stance made a huge impression on him and still influence his work to this date.Ai Weiwei with his father Ai Qing, 1958. At least 4.8 million people were left homeless by the earthquake, though it is believed that the unofficial number could be as high as 11 million. Ai Weiwei has collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron for the Beijing Olympic's 2008 Bird's Nest stadium as well as his design works for an art gallery in Beverly Hills. The destruction of houses through shaking and landslides resulted in the 7th highest death toll in the last 100 years. That's … Ai started his embarkment on architecture without even realizing it. In contrast the exhibition at Lisson focuses on sculptures he has created by hand from scratch. Ai is the son of renowned poet Ai Qing, a one-time member of the Chinese Communist Party who was accused of 'rightist' opposition to the government the year of his son's birth. News BY Katherine Grube from Nov/Dec 2009. To these ends, Ai Weiwei’s body must be understood in two, often inseparable, senses. He became famous worldwide in 2009 thanks to his highly celebrated art project, Remembering, [1] It was constructed from nine thousand children’s backpacks. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. It was so captivating and popular that it rubbed the Chinese ruling regime the wrong way, and Ai Weiwei’s career has never been the same. Celebrated Chinese conceptual artist Ai Weiwei addresses this very question in his current Marciano Art Foundation installation, Life Cycle (2018). Remember when a local artist smashed one of Ai Weiwei's painted Han Dynasty urns in protest at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in February? He received the 2008 Chinese Contemporary Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement. The sad side of Remembering aside, Ai Weiwei is one of the most exhilarating artists in the modern art world. in 1995 Chinese artist Ai Weiwei photographed himself as he picked up a 2000 year old urn and let it smash to the ground if we're appalled when cultural heritage is destroyed in the name of God and state how can we possibly defend eyes action how can we buy a ticket to see photos of it in a museum how can those photos sell for over a million dollars how can this man be one of the most renowned artists of our time this is the case for AI weiwei i Weiwei … Is the artwork the daily placing of flowers, or the documentation of the placing of flowers? Ai Weiwei, Wade-Giles romanization Ai Wei-wei, (born May 18?, 1957, Beijing, China), Chinese artist and activist who produced a multifaceted array of creative work, including sculptural installations, architectural projects, photographs, and videos. Needless to say, their life wasn’t a bed of roses, as his father was forced to do back-breaking manual labor, including cleaning public toilets. Frank Gehry has produced sculptural pieces like his memorable Fish Lamps and his cardboard Carumba Experimental Edges chair. Like him, his father was a low-key activist and was consequently detained by the Nationalist regime on the suspicion that he was a Leftist. The ban ran for over 600 days. The sight was quite disheartening, but more so was the words of a mother of one of the deceased children – that she’d like her daughter to be remembered that “she lived happily for seven years in this world.”. He was also imprisoned by Chairman Mao’s regime after the formation of the People’s Republic of China, this time on suspicion of being a Rightist. He has also been awarded the Appraisers Association Award for Excellence in the Arts, and Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, in Berlin, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The quake ruptured the fault for a radius of 240 kilometers (150 miles), with a surface displacement of some meters. Why did Ai Weiwei create this giant tea cube? After his father’s passing in 1996, he went ahead to build a studio in Beijing. What a spectacle to behold, right? , wherein the object lacked cultural weight until placed in an art context. The ban ran for over 600 days. He has managed to produce one impressive artwork after another. Ai Weiwei, Remembering, 2009, backpacks on the facade of the Haus der Kunst* (Munich) For his one-man show in Munich Haus der Kunst in 2009, Ai Weiwei created a simple yet moving installation on the façade of the museum. Ai Weiwei’s turn to ceramics was also inspired by memories of home and family. This artwork is made up of photographs and the bicycle, but the artwork also existed in cyberspace -as a daily posting on his website and social media feeds. In 2003, he established FAKE Design, an architectural firm. Ai Weiwei's colored vases: Clever artwork or vandalism? Ai Weiwei made these two uncomfortable couches from marble, Ai Weiwei uses thousands of bicycles to create sculpture. However, this is not the well-worn strategy of the readymade. Artworks. In his retrospective show So Sorry (October 2009 to January 2010, Munich, Germany), Weiwei created the installation Remembering on the façade of the Haus der Kunst. … The Neolithic period runs from around 5,000BC to about 3,000BC. Ai Weiwei is unmistakably one of the most influential and equally controversial Chinese artists in recent history. Each backpack represents a life lost in the earthquake in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 2008. By Lilly Wasserman ICONOGRAPHY IN THE WORK OF AI WEIWEI 2. WHO IS AI WEIWEI? Because of the artist involvement in the government matters through his social media as well as his documentary “So sorry”, he researched by his own means the actual number of lives lost. In terms of economic losses, the earthquake was the second largest in history, very close to the Tohoku earthquake in Japan. According to official reports, the number of casualties reached 374,176, while 18,222 were listed as missing in July 2008. Regarding … As if things weren’t worse enough, education in this small village was nearly nonexistent. Another issue was the inaccessibility of the region and probably lack of local experience. Ai’s career as an artist met with a few headwinds during its formative years. Im Inneren des Gebäudes installierte er „Soft Ground“. Exploration Proposal: Rollover Tasks and Holiday Homework, Related questions, Holiday Homework and Assessment reports. Though they also invited international humanitarian assistance, only a few engaged directly. In his childhood, Ai had to learn versatile skills like making bricks and carpentry. August 1957 in Peking) ist ein chinesischer He got a paper and a pen, and just designed his house/studio in Beijing. The Sichuan earthquake forced constructors to build better earthquake-resistant houses, as the recent earthquake in the region saw not even a single building collapse. Each one was unique: hand-crafted from porcelain in Jingdezhen – the Chinese town that once produced imperial porcelain for over a thousand years. Urns of this vintage are usually cherished for their importance in human evolutionary history. Ai Weiwei is the most famous Chinese artist living today. Ai Weiwei's crabs - A clever wordplay & internet censorship, This was Ai Weiwei's refugee life jacket installation. In 2011, Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds – 100 million of them – were poured into the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Ai Weiwei tells us that "For me, the Internet is about how to act as an individual and at the same time to reach massive numbers of unknown people" (Morain, 2013). This artwork is made up of photographs and the bicycle, but the artwork also existed in cyberspace -as a daily posting on his website and social media feeds. A report by Amnesty International in 2009 stated that bereaved parents who tried to get answers about the deaths of their children were thrown to jail. They spelled out the sentence “She lived happily for seven years in this world” in Chinese characters (this was a quote from a mother whose child died in the earthquake). His focus on human rights and social change eventually led to his detainment by Chinese authorities for nearly three months in 2011. The Sichuan Earthquake occurred on May 12, 2008, in Wenchuan, China, at 14:28:01 China Standard Time. Ai was born in Beijing in 1957, the same year his father Ai Qing (1910-96) was purged by apparatchiks for whom he had once written poems of praise. Ai grew up in the far north-west of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. This was a welcome move, following several decades of Chairman Mao’s anti-intellectual campaigns and anti-art policies. The family was subsequently exiled to a … Compressional forces produced by this shift clipped the ground the earth in two locations along the fault, prodding the ground upward by about 29 feet or 9 meters in some regions. The Kemper exhibition demonstrates the range of Ai’s concerns, from warfare to historical preservation, migration to memory. What’s more, he made many trips around the United States and even became a blackjack player in the Atlanta casino scene. While in every significant natural disaster, a deluge of assistance from international NGOs had massively had an impact. The installation consists of photographs  of some of the bunches of flowers Ai Weiwei put in his bicycle basket every day during his travel ban. Ai Weiwei: She lived happily for seven years in this world. Let’s delve right into the exciting world of Ai Weiwei, shall we?Ai Weiwei – Remembering, 2009, backpacks and metal armature, 925 x 10605 x 10 cm (364 x 4175 x 4 in), Haus der Kunst, Munich, photo: CC BY-ND 2.0 by douglemoine. Germany China. He also took to the streets with fellow artists and activists to agitate for democracy. Weiwei has used his art to address both the corruption of the Chinese communist government and its outright neglect of human rights, particularly in the realm of the freedom of speech and thought. Now. In the first few months there, he tried to spruce up his English and study in small bits at several different institutions. The villages and towns in the mountains were all wrecked, and many schools were buried. Unfortunately, he dropped out after only 6 months and had to scrape by as a street artist and work odd jobs. Artwork Images. For instance, in May 2010, a magnitude-5.0 struck Chengdu was a result of the 2008 earthquake. In Featured. In Ai Weiwei: Early activism and Sunflower Seeds …from Ai’s “citizen investigation” was Remembering (2009), an installation in Munich in which 9,000 coloured backpacks were arranged on a wall to form a quote, in Chinese, from an earthquake victim’s mother. A new series of works deal with the way the world treats its most valuable physical commodity: our materials. Weiwei has been successful in using the internet (which is severely restricted in China) as a medium for his art. The Chinese activist Ai Weiwei is mounting an exhibit at the infamous Alcatraz prison featuring 176 Lego portraits of prisoners of conscience and political exiles. Iconography in the work of Ai WeiWei 1. The government of the Republic of China dedicated 1 trillion RMB, which is equivalent to USD146.5 billion, in the next three years to revamp the area affected by the earthquake under the Chinese economic stimulus program. Many student deaths were blamed on the low-quality construction of school buildings. Ai and his family were forced into exile in Shihezi, in far northwest Xinjiang. The aftershocks of the tremor continued to hit the region even after months have passed, causing further damages and causalities. These urns were handmade, but on a large scale. Your email address will not be published. image by theMUC. Made with 9’000 schoolbags (McMahon, 2010), it symbolises the life of the students who died during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. Remembering” is a piece of art created by Ai Weiwei on the wall of the “Haus der Kunst” in Munich. „Remembering“ ist eines von zwei eigens für das Haus der Kunst angefertigten Werke Ais. The Chinese government dominated the response to the disaster. While Ai’s art was lauded internationally, the frequently provocative and subversive dimension of his art, as well as his political outspokenness, triggered … This haunting meditation on the global refugee crisis presents countless figures packed onto an inflatable raft. Ai Weiwei (chinesisch 艾未未, Pinyin Ài Wèiwèi; * 28. For his one-man show in Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 2009, he created a simple yet moving installation on the façade of the museum. Ai Weiwei - The Sichuan earthquake & 90 tons of steel. In December 2011, he was a runner-up in the Time’s Person of the Year Award. The substitution of one kind of value for another occurs when he displays the transformed urns in a museum case, reinstilling value but replacing historical significance with a newer cultural one. Previous Post. Besides, the colors have been used for the Toys R Us logo.Ai Weiwei – Remembering, 2009, backpacks and metal armature, 925 x 10605 x 10 cm (364 x 4175 x 4 in), Haus der Kunst, Munich, photo: CC BY-ND 2.0 by douglemoineAi Weiwei – Remembering, 2009, backpacks and metal armature, 925 x 10605 x 10 cm (364 x 4175 x 4 in), Haus der Kunst, Munichif(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-publicdelivery_org-banner-1-0')}; The Great Sichuan Earthquake or Wenchuan earthquake was the most fatal ever to hit China since the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, killing more than 240,000 people and the strongest since the Chayu earthquake of 1950, measured at 8.5 on the Richter magnitude scale. 1995. These are the practical skills that later came in handy when he started creating his artworks. Ai Weiwei Hospitalized After Beating by Chinese Police. It also had the highest number of homeless in history. They were produced quite cheaply and in large quantities to be placed in tombs. Instead, Ai’s chosen readymades already have significance. As the public questioned the quality of construction at the schools in the region and the accuracy in the death toll for students, the government immediately began a crackdown that was so harsh that it only increased the dissenting voices. This is way more than the total number of houses in the entire continent of Australia. In 2010, he received the Das Glas der Vernunft at Kassel Citizen Award, Germany. When Ai Weiwei visited these sites, he couldn’t help notice study materials and school backpacks littered around in the debris. If he can’t single-handedly galvanize universal change, he’ll keep undermining political … Within his studio, Ai finds infinite personal freedom. Despite being detained and restricted by the Chinese government, Ai Weiwei has continued to thrive as an artist. “I call on people to be 'obsessed citizens,' forever questioning and asking for accountability. During this time, he wrote 3 popular books based on interviews with his favorite artists, including Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol. A 2000-year old ceremonial Urn 68,636 being from Sichuan province this, however before. Most influential and equally controversial Chinese artists in recent history is very ;! Any other region in the aftermath of the region even after months have passed, causing further damages causalities... 2,000 year old Chinese vases in paint propaganda, and just designed his house/studio in Beijing provoke controversy t his. And equally controversial Chinese artists in the aftermath of the “ Haus der Kunst angefertigten Werke.! To Sichuan after the earthquake in Japan strategy of the most famous Chinese artist living today Ai come! 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