Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing in 1957. For the first eighteen years of his life he and his family lived in exile at the edges of the Gobi desert, because his father Ai Qing was persecuted by the communist party as a dissident political activist, poet and author. It was not until 1975 that Ai Weiwei and his family could return home to Beijing.

Towards the end of the 1970’s, Ai Weiwei began studying film at the Beijing Film Academy and founded the avant-garde artists’ collective Xing Xing (Stars). In 1981 he moved to New York where he studied at the Parsons School of Design and at the Art Students League of New York. Seven years later, he had his first solo exhibition: Old Shoes, Safe Sex. Ai Weiwei mixed with exiled Chinese artists, authors, musicians and architects, and became part of the American intellectual and cultural scene.

In 1993, Ai Weiwei returned to China, where he has since become a foreground figure in Chinese contemporary art. His passion for freedom of speech and commitment to social change in China have intensified over the years to the point where he is today one of the regime’s most vocal critics. China’s progression from empire to single-party socialist republic driven by a new capitalist spirit has largely been achieved at the cost of its citizen’s personal freedoms. Time and again, Ai Weiwei stresses individual liberty and personal responsibility as the only route to a functioning, humane society.

In 2007, Ai Weiwei created Fairytale, a unique project for the Documenta 12 exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Ai Weiwei arranged for 1,001 Chinese citizens to travel to Kassel free of charge, where they remained for one week of the exhibition. Selected parts of this project are on view at Magasin 3, along with his Sunflower Seeds, a work comprising 5 metric tons of hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds. This is a version of the installation exhibited at London’s Tate Modern, where the floor of the Turbine Hall was covered with 125 metric tons of porcelain sunflower seeds.

While tending to base his works on Chinese culture, Ai Weiwei ensures that they remain accessible to an international public. They can be regarded not only as a critical commentary on the Maoist Cultural Revolution’s contempt for the past, but also as a means for Ai Weiwei to come to terms with conventional perceptions and values of culture and cultural heritage. He often makes use of iconic artefacts that have great cultural or symbolic significance for Chinese people, and then consciously manipulates them without respect to their value or original function. The works selected for the exhibition at Magasin 3 all revolve around China’s place in the world, mass production and global trade.

Ai Weiwei is also a blogger, curator and architect. He used his blogg to denounce Chinese authorities and draw attention to the country’s many social problems. In June 2009 the blog was shut down by the authorities after his public condemnation of how the government restricted access to information about the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Ai Weiwei was artistic consultant to the Swiss architect firm Herzog & de Meuron for Beijing ’s olympic stadium “the Bird’s Nest” and will collaborate with them again on the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012 in London.

In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested and detained on unclear grounds at an unknown location for three months. His plight has since brought him considerable attention from quarters far beyond the world of art. On his release in June 2011, he was prohibited from travelling for a year and banned from expressing his views via the internet and other media.

Despite his absence, his work has been exhibited at the Mary Boone Gallery, New York (January and February 2012), the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (October 2011 – March 2012) and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (November 2011 – February 2012). Summer 2011, his Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads was shown at New York’s Pulitzer Fountain and London’s Somerset House.

Ai Weiwei’s works have been exhibited in some of the world’s most significant art venues: the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London (2010); the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2011); Stiftung DKM, Duisburg (2010); the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland (2010); Arcadia University Gallery, Glenside (2010); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2009); Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Beijing (2009); the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Cambelltown Arts Center, Sydney (2008); and Groninger Museum, Groningen (2008).

His works have also featured in the Venice Biennial in Italy (1999); the Guangzhou Triennial in China (2002); the Montpellier Biennial of Chinese Contemporary Art in France (2005); the Guangzhou Triennial in China (2005); the Busan Biennial in Korea (2006); the Asia Pacific Triennial for Contemporary Art in Australia (2006); documenta 12 in Germany (2007); the Liverpool Biennial International 08 in Britain (2008); the Venice Architecture Biennial; and the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2010).