Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism.
Background
Ai Weiwei was born on August 28, 1957 in Beijing, China. His father was Ai Qing, the Chinese poet. His mother was Gao Ying, a writer. Ai Weiwei had also a brother Ai Xuan, a Chinese painter.
In 1958, the family was sent to a labour camp in Beidahuang, Heilongjiang, when Ai was one year old. They were subsequently exiled to Shihezi, Xinjiang in 1961, where they lived for 16 years. In 1976 the family returned to Beijing.
Education
Ai enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 and studied animation. From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States. Ai Weiwei was among the first generation of students to study abroad following China's reform in 1980, being one of the 161 students to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) in 1981.
For the first few years, Ai lived in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He studied English at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. Later, he moved to New York City and studied briefly at Parsons School of Design. Ai attended the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1986, where he studied with Bruce Dorfman, Knox Martin and Richard Pousette-Dart. He later dropped out of school.
In March 2010, Ai received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Faculty of Politics and Social Science, the University of Ghent, Belgium. In 2011 he became an Honorary Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom. Ai received an Honorary Degree from Pratt Institute, United States in 2012 and an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, United States in 2013.
Having dropped out of school, Ai made a living out of drawing street portraits and working odd jobs. Ai was a professional blackjack player for a brief period early in life. During this period, he gained exposure to the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, and began creating conceptual art by altering ready-made objects.
When he was living in the East Village, Manhattan (from 1983 to 1993), Ai carried a camera with him all the time and would take pictures of his surroundings wherever he was. The resulting collection of photos were later selected and is now known as the New York Photographs.
Although Ai initially focused on painting, he soon turned to sculpture, inspired by the ready-made works of the French artist Marcel Duchamp and the German sculptor Joseph Beuys. Among his early creations exhibited at a solo show in New York City in 1988 were a wire hanger bent into the shape of Duchamp’s profile and a violin with a shovel handle in place of its neck.
Ai returned to China in 1993. There he co-published a series of three books about this new generation of artists with Chinese curator Feng Boyi: "Black Cover Book" (1994), "White Cover Book" (1995), and "Gray Cover Book" (1997).
Ai has been the Artistic Director of China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW) since 1997.
In 1999 he moved to Caochangdi, in the northeast of Beijing, and built a studio house - his first architectural project. Next, in 2000 he co-curated the art exhibition "Fuck Off" with curator Feng Boyi in Shanghai, China. Due to his interest in architecture, Ai founded the architecture studio FAKE Design in 2003.
Ai was invited to write a blog for the Chinese Web portal Sina in 2005, but in 2009 the Chinese government shut down the blog, and Ai was placed under surveillance, though he refused to curtail his activities. Thus Ai began posting on social media site Twitter, gaining worldwide exposure and an online presence.
In November 2010, Ai was placed under house arrest by the Chinese police. His studio was demolished in a surprise move by the local government in the evening of January 11, 2011. On June 22, 2011, the Chinese authorities released Ai from jail after almost three months' detention on charges of tax evasion. On June 21, 2012, Ai's bail was lifted. Although he is allowed to leave Beijing, the police informed him that he is still prohibited from traveling to other countries because he is "suspected of other crimes", including pornography, bigamy and illicit exchange of foreign currency.
As of December 31, 2013, Ai has declared that he would stop tweeting but the account remains active in forms of re-tweets and Instagram posts. Until 2015, he remained under heavy surveillance and restrictions of movement, but continued to work. Ai's visual art includes sculptural installations, woodworking, video and photography.
In 2011, Ai served as co-director and curator of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, and co-curator of the exhibition Shanshui at The Museum of Art Lucerne. Also in 2011, Ai spoke at TED (conference) and was a guest lecturer at Oslo School of Architecture and Design. He also designed the cover for 17 June 2013 issue of Time magazine. In 2013, Ai became a Reporters Without Borders ambassador.
In July 2015 Ai was finally provided with an international passport. He has since relocated to Berlin and held exhibitions in Helsinki, Paris, and other Western cities.
Ai premiered the documentary "Human Flow" at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. The movie follows the plights of millions of displaced persons across 23 countries through intimate interviews of individual refugees and drone footage of expansive temporary camps.
That same year, a series of Ai’s public sculptures, titled "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" (a reference to a line in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”), was installed throughout New York City.
Ai has always been a political activist. Since 1999, however, his visibility in the public eye, both in the West and in China, has been seen as an active threat by Chinese government officials.
In 2005 he began to express himself via a blog, which he was invited to start by the Chinese internet firm Sina. In 2009 the Chinese government shut down the blog.
Ai has outspoken critics of the Chinese Communist Party. He has demanded democracy in China, criticized government corruption and the Chinese government itself.
In a series of impassioned Twitter posts after the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, he expressed his anger at the death of thousands of schoolchildren due to the shoddy construction of school buildings in the area, evidence of governmental corruption. Hoping to sweep this national embarrassment under the rug, government officials failed to release the numbers (over 5,000 deaths, according to the most recent estimate), and Ai started an independent investigation, bringing the facts and evidence to light. This investigation was interrupted in 2008 when police broke into his hotel room in Chengdu, and beat him so badly that he was hospitalized with a cerebral haemorrhage.
Since then, the Chinese government has taken further measures to limit Ai's freedom of movement and communication, both in and outside the country. In 2010 he was put under house arrest for several weeks; in 2011 he was banned from using Twitter, and his home was installed with government surveillance cameras. In 2011 he was arrested at Beijing International Airport and detained without formal charges (the official reason was financial crimes). As all this was occurring, the Western art world watched in horror and mobilized in his defense with the help of international human rights groups. After 81 days, Ai was released and fined over 12 million yuan (US $1.85 million). In July 2015 he was finally provided with an international passport. While his international reputation did not ultimately shield him from harsh punishment, what led to his eventual release was a global awareness of his situation and increasing diplomatic pressure from democratic countries.
During recent time, Ai’s trouble with Chinese authorities seemingly continued when his studio was again demolished in 2018.
Views
As an activist, Ai calls attention to human rights violations on an epic scale; as an artist, he expands the definition of art to include new forms of social engagement. He is an artist who actually put his life on the line to defend freedom of expression. Besides, Ai's dramatic actions highlight the widening gap between the ideal and the real in Chinese society.
Quotations:
“Freedom is a powerful thing. Once you’ve experienced it in your heart, no one can take it away from you. Then you can be more powerful than an entire country.”
"No autocracy can lead people to believe that they are living in harmony and happiness."
"The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China."
"My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art."
"Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy."
"Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice."
"If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer."
"Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?"
"What can they do besides exile me or make me disappear? They have no imagination or creativity."
"The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility."
"Everything is art. Everything is politics."
"Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be."
"I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is okay, to speak out."
"Today, the West feels very shy about human rights and the political situation. They’re in need of money. But every penny they borrowed or made from China has really come as a result of how this nation sacrificed everybody’s rights. With globalization and the Internet, we all know it. Don’t pretend you don’t know it."
"Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention."
"Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know."
"China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism."
Membership
Ai Weiwei was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars" in 1978.
In 2010 he served as jury member for Future Generation Art Prize, Kiev, Ukraine. He was a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, Germany in 2011. Besides, Ai was elected as Foreign Member of Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 2012.
Academy of Arts
,
Germany
2011
Royal Swedish Academy of Arts
,
Sweden
2012
art group the "Stars"
,
China
1978
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Anish Kapoor: "I've never met Ai Weiwei but he's a colleague, an artist. In a very simple way he is heroically recording human existence. All he's done is to record death by administration, death by corruption, inefficiency. I don't even think he's pointing that sharp a finger, frankly."
Interests
Politicians
Liu Xiaobo
Connections
Ai is married to artist Lu Qing and has a son from an extramarital relationship.