Ai Weiwei - art and riot of an indomitable

Who is Ai Weiwei?

Ai Weiwei is the most famous artist of China , even if or precisely because he is not one of the artists who are suitable to reduce the fundamental distrust of the Chinese rulers towards free, contemporary art. According to the (commercially oriented, categorizing the world art) Art Facts list, Ai Weiwei is also quite famous, currently the No. 130 in the world, with tendency upwards.

For politically and socially interested, he may even get slightly higher than number 1 in the world, 50-95 percent courage, 50-95 percent will to democracy and 50-95 percent art creativity with corresponding results (50-95, because the author does not want to presume here) add up more than 100 percent.

Read more about the difficult artist life of an amazing man:

Ai Weiwei is an artist name

Ai Weiwei is actually only called Ai, the "Weiwei" is his artist name, who already indicates his political work. Because Weiwei translates "double negation" , just a suitable name for a collaborator and critic.

Since his arrest for global protests and creates a new cohesion between citizens, politicians and artists in China, his followers also gave him a nickname, "Ai Shen" , translated the "God of Love", for his tireless efforts for oppressed and disfigured.

The birthday ai Weisweis

Ai Weiwei was born on August 28, 1957.

Make a birthday? The age of space travel began in 1957 - the Soviet satellite SPUTNIK 1 reached the flag in 1957, exactly one week after Ai Weisweis birth. In 1957 the European Union (EU) was also launched, with the signing of the "Roman contracts" that come into force on January 1, 1958.

In addition, a lot of interesting people were born in 1957, e.g. B. Walter Moers (Captain Blaubär, The Little Association), Frank Schätzing, Joachim Król, Ulrich Tukur, Gloria Estefan, Sabine Christiansen, Ethan Coen and Matthias Reim.

On the same day as Ai Weiwei, on August 28th, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born (just 208 years earlier, 1749).

Ai Weiwei's birthplace

Ai Wei Wei was born in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China.

However, he was only allowed to enjoy life in the capital - in 1958 his father was banished for his opinion and writings from the capital, initially to Manchuria.

It is located in Northeast China, not a particularly cozy area, shortly before Siberia, here the little Ai (ài = "love") grew up in his early youth. Then it continued to the opposite end of China, after Xinjiang, like Manchuria a region in which fox and rabbit say good night and people are also withdrawn from every political and social activity.

Parents and childhood of Ai Weiwei

Ai Weisweis parents are the literary and artist Ai Qing and Gao Ying, who has been separated from her husband since exile, he has a 10 -year -old half -brother named Ai Xuan and a 5 -year sister, Gao.

Ai Weiwe's father, the poet and painter Ai Qing, had already faced the western world in the 1930s and studied art in Paris. The commitment to a left -wing artist association brought Ai Qing the first arrest, from 1932 to 1935, his writings of "literary modernism" a ban on publication and exile.

The Ai Qing, celebrated today as a co -founder of the Chinese "New Lyric", has put the open orientation into the rest of the world and regime critics in his son Ai Weiwei, and unfortunately China is still a country today in which there is a lot to criticize for a Chinese citizen.

The father died in 1996, the mother is firmly with her son and his political work, she traveled to Venice at the age of 82 to open ai Weiwei's exhibition Sacred - in the deputy of her son, to whom the Chinese power of the power was denied the exit permit.

She also supports Ai Weiwei's work by brave statements by accusing the Chinese officials of recreating her son and describing whose behavior towards her son as "creepy, crooked and evil".

His sister Gao GE also works tirelessly for the artist together with his wife Lu Qing, after his arrest in 2011 she gives countless interviews in the international press, while Lu Qing takes care of studio and art in Beijing and fights on site.

The half -brother Ai Xuan , 65, is a painter of Chinese realism and produces paintings in a style that has his roots in the Soviet "romantic realism", with some hints to the work of the American realistic painter Andrew Wyeth, whose work he met through the few foreign magazines, which circulated under Chinese art students.

He is also famous, but in contrast to Ai Weiwei in China. 4 million yuan (just under € 480,000) is a normal price for Chinese collectors, once a painting for 28 million Yuan (approx. 3.3 million euros) was sold, the highest price that was ever achieved in China for the work of a living artist.

Ai Xuan lives like Ai Weiwei in Beijing, a few minutes from his brother. The brothers born by various mothers are not very close, they are said to have spoken for the last time in 1996 when the common father died.

Ai Weisweis training as an artist

Ai Weiwei actually wanted to become a director, he wrote down in 1978 at the Beijing Film Academy. At that time, the Beijing Film Academy had just opened again in the course of the normalization of public and social life after the end of the cultural revolution, Ai Weiwei was part of the first year.

Together with the film director and author Chen Kaig and with director Zhang Yimou, he studied both representatives of the so -called "fifth generation" of Chinese film , who have contributed a lot to increase the reputation of Chinese film in international reputation in the past 30 years.

While Chen Kaig with films such as "yellow earth" (1984) broke only so far with the traditional and too narrow aesthetic, narrative and political norms of the Chinese cultural business that he brought China back to the international map of film art, Zhang Yimou continued.

His films ran at many international film festivals and were able to significantly strengthen the reputation of modern Chinese cinema, the performance was prohibited by the Chinese authorities.

Stars Group artist group with others , who rejected “Art according to the state guideline” for and in China.

Ai Weisweis artistic breakthrough

concept art and performance, pop art and dadaism this decade .

Ai Weiwei also continued artistically abroad, graduating from the Parsons School of Design and studied at the Art Students League of New York . In 1993 he returned to Beijing because his father was ill, in 1994 he founded the China Art Archives and Warehouse gallery for experimental art . Ai Weiwei moved to the Beijing art district Dashazi, where he still lives today.

Immediately after his return to Beijing, Ai Weiwei released three books, in which contemporary Chinese artists were given the opportunity to explain their way of working for the first time: "The Black Cover Book" (1994), "The White Cover Book" (1995), "The Gray Cover Book" , 1997.

What kind of art does ai Weiwei do?

Ai Weiwei makes concept art and operates as a sculptor and curator, he creates sculptures and installations, design and architecture art, other forms of artistic expression of the diverse artist are pictures and books, films and photographs.

No matter which medium: Ai Weiwei is always about commenting in his work the serious changes that his home country has suffered since the country's economic opening. Comments with a lot of criticism, Ai Weiwei approaches human rights violations and economic exploitation and environmental pollution in his home country .

Formally, he refers to old artistic traditions in his country, but also to international influences such as Marcel Duchamp's , the pioneer of Dadaism and co -founder of concept art .

Ai Weiwei processes known objects, antiques and spiritual objects, for example, and places them in a new, unusual context.

From 2002 he was working on the emergence of the new Chinese nation stadium , a sensational building, also called a Chinese swallow nest, also referred to a Chinese swallow nest .

The draft was created in cooperation with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the China Architecture Design & Research Group and Arupsport, which was the winner from the international architectural competition.

Ai Weiwei initially stood by Herzog & de Meuron as an artistic consultant, but soon began to criticize the project, which he described as a megalomania and inadequate because of the disproportionately high cost overrun during construction.

At that time, the cost explosion even led to the demolition of the construction project, when the stadium opened for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 330 meter long, 220 meter wide and almost 70 meter high building had devoured construction costs of 3.5 billion yuan (325 million euros).

At that time, ai Weiweiwei refused to participate in the opening ceremony shortly before the opening of the games, you can find his justifying speech in the article "Ai Weiwei - Never Sorry About Oppression" , in which you can always find some creative and always unusual, entertaining and critical art about AI Weis.

Ai Weisweis art becomes political protest

When Ai Weiwei refused to open the opening ceremony of the nation stadium, he had now made art in Beijing for almost a decades and a half, which the Chinese rulers repeatedly challenged. So z. B. between 2003 and 2005 several films that show nothing other than the unimaginable and unhealthy traffic chaos in Beijing, according to Ai Weiwei, an "almost mathematical, un-emotional way to show the fainting of people and the blind nature of urban renovation".

No art that delights authoritarian rulers, but oppressed people all the more. When Ai Weiwei started a blog on the Internet in 2006, in which he enlightened political scandals, he quickly had millions of readers.

This text about the "new China" did not like the "old cliques" at all, the regime closed the blog in 2009, when Ai Weiwei does not stop committing to democracy, intellectual freedom and human rights, he will be arrested in a protest campaign and from 03.04.2011 he was held in an unknown place for 81 days. When Ai Weiwei is released on June 22, 2011, this is not a freedom - it is under strict requirements and does not enjoy any freedom of travel until today.

Since then, the artist Ai Weiwei has been an issue in many media in the western world because he continues to be critical and active with China's difficult and hesitant path to democracy.

Because the artist leads this struggle with the involvement of his person, because the Chinese authorities do not relax and do not leave him out, he also urgently needs this help from representatives of a democratic world.

If he protests, Ai Weiwei always has art for us, films and web projects, performances and music, and that is not a serious art, but it is very lively and creative works of a man who cannot be put down and always makes it clear with his work that he has not yet lost the belief in a better china.

In the article "Ai Weiwei - The Fake Case", you will find out more about the origins of political engagement AI Weis and the expressions that this political commitment in his art accepts.

Important exhibitions of Ai Weiwei - an overview

Ai Weiwei had solo exhibitions in Australia and Belgium, China and Germany, France and Italy, Japan and the USA and in some other countries. In 1999 he was on the 48th Biennale of Venice, 2002 on the Chinese Guangzhou Trienniale, 2006 on Biennale of Sydney and 2007 on Documenta 12.

One of his last projects in freedom was "The Unilever Series: Sunflower Seeds" in the Tate Modern, London in 2010/2011, for which 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds were released on the floor of the ex-turbine hall.

The visitors went through the fine kernels enthusiastically and created so much abrasion that the barefoot passage had to be set.

In March 2011, a first overall works show by Ai Weiwei in Beijing was supposed to begin, which should then be postponed due to the annual conference of the People's Congress (large-communist party assembly), Ai Weiwei then thanked the exhibition itself.

Overall, Ai Weiwei currently (2014) has a record of around 90 exhibitions in the USA, almost 50 in China and in Germany and around 20 in Switzerland.

Ai Weiwei received many prices for his commitment, e.g. B. 2013 an Award of the Appraisers Association of America for Excellence in the Arts, and the honorary membership of the honorable Royal Academy of Arts of Great Britain was also awarded this year.

An important exhibition by Ai Weiwei is currently on when this article is written: "Evidence", in the Martin Gropius building in Berlin , runs until July 7th, 2014. "Evidence" is the world's largest solo exhibition by AI Weiwei, for many artists and art lovers the "Art event of the year" in Germany (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Berlin-Kreuzberg, Mi-Mo, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., 03.07.07.2014). It is already foreseeable that the exhibition in Berlin will be a audience racer, in the first three weeks 55,000 spectators looked at the work show.

It is no coincidence that this large exhibition takes place in Berlin, Ai Weiwei is closely linked to Berlin. Before his arrest, he had just planned to acquire a studio in Berlin-Schöneweide, which was to be the second point of contact for his team in addition to the Beijing Studio, Ai Weiwei was appointed as a visiting professor to the Berlin University of the Arts, from Berlin one of the first appeals for release AI Weiwei (subject to his approval, which he was given, was made at the beginning of June 2011 ( "With great joy" said) in the Academy of the Arts Berlin.

In spring 2014, Ai Weisweis film "The Fake Case" in cinemas , a Canadian-Danish-British production directed by the award-winning Danish documentary filmmaker Andreas Rosforth Johnsen, more on that in the article "Ai Weiwei-The Fake Case".

Book tip for Ai Weiwei and his fight

The blog, which Ai Weiwei started on the Internet in 2006, was filled by him with critical texts until the regime closed it in 2009, during this time a kind of "basic text about the new China" . Which of course can of course no longer be found on the Internet, the chiefs in China have taken care of it, but it has been available as a book since 2011.

Ai Weiwei, "Do not make any illusions about me" . The forbidden blog. Edited by Lee Ambrozy. Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2011.

The direct way to Ai Weiwei

On his official website https://aiweiweiwei.com can get an idea of ​​the artist.

You will also find art, an incredible flower parade in memory of children who were killed in an earthquake, and a reference to a project that Ai Weiwei carries out with Olafur Eliasson , a very exciting moon, more is not revealed here.

In order to experience the artist himself, you would still have to travel to China at the moment, neither in Berlin nor two weeks later in the New York Brooklyn Museum ("Ai Weiwei: According to what?") Ai Weiwei was able to open the exhibitions with his works himself.

The installation in the entree of Art Cologne, which shows a bouquet of flowers for every day, on which the artist occupied with a travel ban does not get his passport, was definitely richer by four bouquets by April 13 ...