Thursday, January 10, 2013

Ai Weiwei in DC - Update, More Photos


"Cube Light," Ai Weiwei, 2003

I wish the USA had an artist like Ai Weiwei.  (The only person who comes close is Michael Moore, but he works mostly in video and motion pictures.)  Weiwei drives the Chinese government crazy with his popularity and brave challenges to the Chinese status quo.  Even so, he was one of the collaborators on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium, constructed in 2008.  The Hirshhorn Museum in DC is showing Weiwei's "According to What?" show until February 24, 2013.  With some 50 pieces of his art, the exhibit includes video, audio, photography, sculpture, graphic design, and architecture.  He also has his thoughts posted in the gallery, too.  



Ai Weiwei's show is unlike anything I've ever seen at the Hirshhorn before.  Weiwei helped conduct an investigation, begun by another artist, into the number of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.  Schools collapsed in the earthquake because of shoddy, cheap construction (referred to as "tofu" construction), and more than 5,000 children were lost.  Weiwei and a large number of volunteers tracked down their names.  In his studio in China, he has papered the walls with the lists.  One wall of the exhibit here also has a copy of this listing, accompanied by audio of volunteers reading each name aloud.  Linda Delk, photographer extraordinaire, lent the following photos of the "Quake Names" wall and "Snake Ceiling," made of student backpacks of various sizes (representing the various ages) to me for this post!  Thanks, Linda.

Copyright Linda Delk 2013
Copyright Linda Delk 2013

This kind of exposure has irritated the Chinese government no end, and Weiwei has been beaten (requiring brain surgery in Germany) and jailed and placed under house arrest in China with no access to the internet.  Before this, he spent 12 years in the USA--Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, mostly.  (A couple of the photos in the exhibit show him with Brooklynite Allen Ginsberg.)  Ai Weiwei--talented, funny, humane, brave, conscientious--is a saint for the modern age.

I thought of some of the new construction going up here in DC, and I remember being horrified to see that the initial stage of one entire development, building after building, was made of wood 2x4s.  Not steel, not poured concrete...wood.  I think there's a DC law that says all housing must be made of brick.  Anyway, DC's old structures are being demolished daily here.  Photos of new developments in China are also part of the exhibit, and remarkably, the scene is almost the same.  The Chinese are demolishing the old and replacing it with tall buildings housing many, not just one or two families.  The bowls of freshwater pearls represent China's natural wealth, which is fast disappearing in a profit-driven age.  Are we, too, becoming China?





[P.S.  I apologize for the scarcity of photos. I plan to go back with my real camera and take some more.  I really want a good photo of the "Tea House"...which is made of compressed tea.  The scent is lovely, although we don't have smell-o-vision yet......


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8 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:53 PM

    Testing.....for you, Cathy....I don't have any problem with this.

    m.e.

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    1. Anonymous8:40 AM

      I weiwei is a gift. A marvelous development that we all share him. America has gifts too. Different. Michael Moore? Bradley Manning? Each government handles gifts the same. Badly.

      Cat

      Delete

  2. Cat: We don't expect government to change, but it does.

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  3. The wall of names and the backpack snake so moving and sad, yet there was hope in that naming the children who died affirms that we do not forget them. Weiwei said that he saw packpackes like these lying scattered in the rubble of the schools. I wondered about the symbolism of the snake. I looked it up and found that in China and Indochina, the snake can symbolize death and rebirth in the shedding of its skin. It is also used as a guardian in the temples. So then this made sense to me as part of this remembrance of the school children who died in the quake. I was also struck by one of his quotes near the name wall:

    "A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights; no matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue."

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    1. packpackes -> backpacks! Can't type or spell any more!

      Delete

  4. I saw that quote about a person's name....and I may have a photo of it. But you've answered one of my big questions: why the snake? The backpacks (packpackes to you) are the snake's skin, shed in the children's death, but the snake continues to live. Our mistake will be if we relate this only to China. It seems our own construction also can be called "tofu dregs" if we simply allow cost-cutting to rule everything. Ai Weiwei is my hero!!

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  5. In a previous post you said you want to have more fun.... well, a visit to the Hirschorn to see this exhibition is definitely classed as fun.... Serious Fun! Wish I could have joined you.

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  6. you're welcome to join us!! Great fun!!

    ReplyDelete

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