Ai Weiwei

Born in Beijing in 1978, Ai Weiwei is a well known contemporary artist in china. Within his work, he has explored and practiced different mediums including photography, curating, film, architecture, installation and sculpture. This making him not only an artist but an architectural designer, curator and social activist because of his beliefs. Ai Weiwei's farther was Ai Qing who was one of China's famous modernist poets, his farther was claimed a rightist and exiled to western china where Ai Weiwei was brought up as a child. It was this experience and upbringing that has led Ai Weiwei to grow to become a social activist and spokesperson for freedom of speech which is incorporated into some of his pieces of work. 

Examples of his work include Circle of Animals- Zodiac Heads, Sunflower Seeds, Remembering and Straight.

 

Zodiac Heads

 

 

Sunflower Seeds

 

 

 

 

Remembering

 

This particular piece by Ai Weiwei was made up of 9000 school backpacks which were all placed on the face of the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich and were part of Ai Weiwei's 'So Sorry' show on at the museum.



 

 

By using the different coloured backpacks Ai Weiwei spells out a sentence in Mandarin which reads; 'She lived happily for seven years in this world'. This sentence is in fact a quote from the mother of one of the many victims from the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Ai Weiwei created this piece in response to the government who underreported the deaths of the victims in the earthquake in 2008 and so the piece documents and remembers the people that perished in the earthquake. The backpacks were used because many amongst the victims were young children and students that had fell victim to the earthquake whilst at school. This was due to poorly designed architecture which caused the collapse of many schools, this could be blamed on the government that had failed to provide the schools with essential materials to reinforce the schools from earthquakes or better architectural designers. Now the piece is a haunting reminder of the 5000 students that lost their lives in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. 

 

Such a bold statement like this attracted the attention of the Chinese government which I believe that was Ai Weiwei's intention to do so. I think that this piece shows how Weiwei has tried to breakdown the Chinese governments image and tried to show how that government have done wrong for example this piece shows up the Chinese government because of how they underreported the deaths of the young victims of the Sichuan earthquake which could have been partially the governments fault to begin with. And so this piece 'Remembering' by Ai Weiwei shows his own attempt of subversion on the Chinese government and what the people think of it.  

 

 

 

Straight

Straight is another piece by Ai Weiwei which shows and reminds all about the Sichuan earthquake that killed over 5000 school children in 2008. For this piece he found and straighten out 150 tones of steel rebar from the wreckage of the schools destroyed by the Sichuan earthquake. He has straighten all of the steel bars out as if knew and the act of straightening them out represents the act of making things right.

 

 

 

 

Again I think that this piece, like his 'Remembering' piece is to show and uncover the missing facts that the Chinese government hid from the people of China about the Sichuan earthquake. Again linking it to Ai Weiwei's personal attempt to make things right and attempt the subversion of the Chinese government.

 

 

 

Other Works