Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei
Ai, Rebel runs until September 7 at Seattle Art Museum; Water Lilies Lego opens March 19 at Asian Art Museum; Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads opens May 17 at Olympic Sculpture Park.
First we see a tree bolted together from different woods. A poem by Ai Weiwei’s poet father Ai Qing about trees: “One tree, another Tree, each standing alone and erect….”. Accused of “rightism” his father was exiled to Xinjiang province in 1958 when Ai Weiwei was a baby. After twenty years they were released in 1976 with the death of Mao and the end of the Cultural Revolution. In the 2022 Water Lilies, Ai Weiwei makes a direct reference to that traumatic experience, with a large black area referring to the underground dug out where he lived with his family. The gnarled tree in this gallery symbolizes longevity and perseverance in adversity.
Ai Weiwei joined an early avant garde group in Beijing, then moved to New York City in 1981 for 10 years. Amidst his black and white photos from the East Village is the artist with Allen Ginsburg, who lived near him. Ai WeiWei spent a lot of time listening to the poet.
In the next gallery are his last large paintings of Chairman Mao and not far away Safe Sex, 1988, a Chinese Army raincoat with a condom coming out of the pocket. In New York he was impressed by Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol which is clearly seen in these works.
Then we see Ai Weiwei destroying or modifying ancient artifacts and remaking them as contemporary art. One extreme example is pulverizing neolithic vases and showing the dust in square glass containers. His most famous act is dropping a Han pot, but here he has painted them with brightly colored industrial paint. I feel discomfort with this act, as a lover of ancient pottery. He rendered handcrafted wooden Qing dynasty stools nonfunctional by removing a leg for example. Other sculptures are transformations are bicycles and stools arranged in abstract forms or a sofa and chair made in marble.
But these are gestures compared to his work after the earthquake in China in 2008 when he discovered that hundreds of children had died because of the poor construction of their schools. He traced them and honored them, with students’ backpacks formed into a huge snake and listing all their names on a huge sheet of white paper in the exhibition. Nearby is the rebar from the destroyed schools shaped into abstract sculpture.
His own detention in 2011 probably is a result of this project in which he recorded parents of children heartbroken with how they were ignored by the government. Or it may have been his huge presence on the internet, where elitism gives way to populism. We can walk into the recreation of the spare room in which he was detained. But the scars of the 81 days stayed with him.
Ai Weiwei moved to Europe in 2015, just as many hundreds of Middle Eastern migrants were trying to cross to Greece from Turkey. His long scroll depicts migrants walking or jammed on vehicles, negotiating ruins or crossing rivers. Called the Odyssey, the title does evoke the travel of Odysseus multiplied by many hundreds of people.
As we approach the room at the end of the exhibition we see a giant Lego portrait of Ai Weiwei in a flash image, a photo he took as he was being taken into detention, here recreated.
The exhibition has other Lego pieces, but the most important given our situation today is the Mueller Report, the cover page and the first page, heavily redacted. This report on Russian hacking during the 2016 election tells us what was happening, as we think about our cozy relationship developing today with Russia. A marble surveillance camera is positioned in front of the report.
There is so much to see and experience in this exhibition! Don’t miss the wallpaper loaded with symbols. Then take a look at the small zodiac heads here and stay tuned for my May column on the Olympic Sculpture park installation opening May 17.
The exhibition provokes us rather than allowing us to sink into admiration. Each phase of his work represents a challenge about the meaning of authenticity. Ai Weiwei defies us to think about that through his constantly changing media and subjects. After his traumatic childhood, it is not surprising that he is willing to strip away obvious meanings and challenging us to look deeper.
~Susan Platt, PhD
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