AI Weiwei

Chinese Artist AI Weiwei "Truth, No Matter the Power: China government's aggressor." This presentation will provide you with an introduction to Ai's life and work, including his personal background, some of his greatest works of art and their significance as well as the controversies they have caused in his native China. Although AI has faced tremendous opposition from the Chinese government, he is a force to be reckoned with: he has dedicated his life to change and expanding awareness about human rights abuses in China.

His international fame has made him a global voice for China's 1.3 billion people. First, I will provide you with a brief background as to Ai's beginnings. Ai is known for his conceptual art, art that emphasizes ideas over aesthetics and visual appeal. Ai believes that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing an artistic product. His early, seminal influence was his father, Ai Qing, a poet sent to a labor camp in 1958 for his criticism of the Chinese government.

Ai was able to taste freedom when he lived in New York from 1981-1993, creating art and studying at Parsons School of Design. During this time, Ai took over 10,000 photographs documenting his experiences. Slide 5 However, Ai could not forget the oppression going on in his homeland. In 1993, he returned to China to work as an artist, architect, filmmaker, and activist. In 2011, he protested the censorship of his art, an act which led to a beating by the police and imprisonment.

Slide 6 This is a reproduction of one of Ai's greatest protest photographs: Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 Slide 7 The photograph is constructed as a triptych: a design which features 3 different images next to each other. In this first image, the man (the artist himself) is shown holding an urn. Slide 8 In the second image, Ai lets the ostensibly valuable Han vase go into the air. In all the photographs, his expression is the same -- utterly unreadable and impassive.

Slide 9 In the third image, the vase falls to the ground and breaks. The triptych depicts the cultural destruction that occurred during the Cultural Revolution. By documenting himself dropping (and destroying) an urn from The Han Dynasty (206 BC -- 220 AD), Ai references incidents from the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-76) when many ancient artifacts of Chinese culture were destroyed in an effort to further the aims of Mao Zedong's Communist agenda. By dropping the urn deliberately, Ai intends to draw attention to these crimes.

At the same time, Ai questions the reverence of and the value of the objects that are preserved by museums and considered 'art.' Ai's act of dropping the urn has been considered iconoclastic and disturbing to many in the art world. In this work, Ai simultaneously honors tradition and breaks with tradition. Some have even compared this work to that of Duchamp's Fountain in its treatment of the concept of the art object. Slide 10 Ai also produced a work of art called Colored Vases in 2007-2010.

Slide 11 Colored Vases had a similar theme to Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995. The work depicts ancient Chinese vases painted over with brightly-colored industrial paint. The work symbolically illustrates how we must destroy the past before we move forward with the new and the destruction of the supposedly valuable vases makes the audience question the value of such artifacts.

What art's value and why is it valuable? Slide 12 As well as conceptual photographs and sculpture, Ai is also noted for his ambitious architectural projects, such as Snake Ceiling (2009), depicting a huge, winding snake across a ceiling. Slide 13 The work was meant to highlight the tragedy which occurred as a result of flimsy construction of government housing and school buildings in the Sichuan province. Almost 80% of the buildings were destroyed and over 7,000 schools collapsed.

Ai's work was thought to imply that the government was attempting to shirk its responsibility in regards to this event. Slide 14 This work embodies the classical features of Ai's style: he effectively turned a tragedy into art. The 'snake' was made up of 5,000 children's colorful backpacks which gives a youthful exuberance to the work even while it commemorates a sorrowful occasion. Slide 15 Ai's He Xie, 2009 is a symbolic work. It is composed of 3200 porcelain-made river crabs. To understand the work, the gazer must understand in.