A former New York resident for 10 years, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is back in the city to present a vast exhibition that will see 300 of his works spread across the metropolis. Refugees and borders are the key theme.
Image: picture-alliance/newscom/J. Angelillo
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Ai Weiwei's art in pictures
Artist Ai Weiwei's fall 2017 show in New York City focuses on one of the Chinese artist's central themes: what it means to be a refugee. But he's always been tackling sensitive issues. Here are some of his works.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Rain
'Good Fences Make Good Neighbors'
Ai Weiwei knows what it means to be a refugee. He was persecuted in his homeland China. His fall 2017 show in New York deals with the global refugee crisis through artwork distributed over the city's five boroughs. One of the largest of his installations, entitled "Gilded Cage," is located on the edge of Central Park (above). It invites viewers to enter and exit it by passing through turnstiles.
Image: picture-alliance/newscom/J. Angelillo
Focusing on refugees
His largest work to date, "Law of the Journey," is a 70-meter-long inflatable boat with 258 faceless refugee figures that was shown in Prague. Ever since he moved to Berlin in 2015, Ai Weiwei has worked on numerous projects related to the plight of refugees, often meeting them personally. His documentary "Human Flow" was up for the Golden Lion Best Film award at the 2017 Venice Film Festival.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/R.Vondrous
Art or self-representation?
In late 2015 the image of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi washed up lifeless on a beach made headlines around the world. In January 2016, Indian news magazine India Today published the above image of Ai Weiwei on the Greek island of Lesbos. While some praised the image as artistic activism, not everyone found the visual protest against European refugee politics ethically acceptable.
The exhibition "Luther and the avant-garde" features contemporary art. According to the 16th century religious reformer himself, images are neither good nor bad; they can inspire belief and prompt contemplation of God. Martin Luther's perspective on artistic freedom paved the way for modern art. Above, Ai Weiwei displays his take on individuality, religion and resistance in the exhibition.
Image: Daniel Biskup
Political art with Legos
In 2015, Lego refused to deliver Ai Weiwei a bulk order of the toys on political grounds. Supporters around the world sent millions of pieces in protest. Ai had already used Legos for a work of art on freedom of expression, shown in the abandoned prison of Alcatraz. It featured over 175 portraits of political activists and prisoners of conscience, such as Edward Snowden and Nelson Mandela.
Image: Getty Images/J. Sullivan
'Berlin, I Love You'
During the 2015 Berlinale film festival, Ai Weiwei directed a movie which depicts his long-distance relationship with his six-year-old son, Ai Lao, who lives with his mother in Berlin. He delivered his instructions for the short film using satellites and via Skype, a logistical tour de force.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/L. Schulze
First-ever solo exhibition in China
Ai Weiwei was allowed to hold a solo exhibition in Beijing in June 2015: This was seen as a sign that the government was easing on his case. Although he avoided direct political works in the show, the authorities pushed back its opening date by a week, as they did not want it to be accessible to the public before June 4 — the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Ng Han Guan
Sunflower seeds
This is part of another famous work which counts millions of pieces. These sunflower seeds are deceptively realistic, yet they were all handcrafted in porcelain by hundreds of artisans. The installation comments on the current "Made in China" economy and also refers to Mao Zedong’s brutal Cultural Revolution (1966—76), where sunflowers were typically used in propaganda images.
Image: L. Gene/AFP/Getty Images
Sign of the zodiac
There are different versions of this installation, "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads," which features 12 animal heads reproducing the traditional Chinese zodiac once part of a fountain clock at the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The sculptures were looted after French and British troops destroyed the imperial retreat in 1850. In June 2015, a bronze version of the work was sold for 3.4 million pounds.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Arrizabalaga
Preserving tradition
In 2014, Ai Weiwei held a huge solo exhibition in Berlin, which he also managed without leaving China. These 6,000 wooden stools filling the atrium of the Martin-Gropius Bau museum, collected throughout the countryside of his Homeland, did make the trip. Wooden stools have been used for centuries in households, and the artist sees them as a symbol of the disappearing traditions of rural China.
Image: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
From two wheels to four
Private car ownership is growing exponentially in China, while the bike fleet is declining. Cyclists are being blamed for causing accidents and congestion. This work is made of 150 bicycles and also commemorates Yang Jia, a Beijing resident arrested for riding an unlicensed bicycle. During his detention he was assaulted and accused of murdering six police officers, leading him to a death sentence.
Image: Getty Images
Artist with gas mask
Ai Weiwei constantly posts pictures of himself on the Internet, such as this one. Air pollution is a major source of protest in China. Social media has become an integral part of the artist's work, allowing him to reach a very wide audience and establish his reputation as a dissident — inspiring many others. He was the recipient of Amnesty International's 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award.
Image: Reuters
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The title of Ai Weiwei's New York art extravaganza that opened Thursday is "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors," a line from a poem by Robert Frost, "The Mending Wall," that has been appropriated to evoke the current refugee crisis and the borders that created it – a central theme in Ai's recent work.
Since leaving China in 2015, Ai Weiwei has documented the unfolding migrant crisis while visiting more than 23 countries and interviewing hundreds of people caught up in refugee camps after fleeing war and conflict. In addition to inspiring his new citywide New York exhibition, Ai Weiwei also used these impressions to make a documentary, "The Human Flow," that premiered in September at the Venice Film Festival and will be out in US cinemas on October 13.
One of the largest installations featured in "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" is the "Gilded Cage," a meters-high golden metal cage erected at the southern end of Central Park.
It is no accident that it was set up a couple of blocks south of Trump Tower, allowing US President Donald Trump to directly look at the installation from his luxury gold apartment.
"Of course, as he is a resident of the city, President Trump is welcome to enjoy this sculpture; and I've made it gold to please him," said Ai at an opening press conference in Central Park. A vocal Trump critic, Ai also called the president's travel ban and US-Mexico border wall "unthinkable policy."
"The refugee crisis is a global humanitarian crisis," the artist explained. "In my opinion, the largest and most powerful countries in the West should take much more responsibility in regard to this crisis."
Above all, the show was made "for the people of the city," said Ai. Having lived in New York from 1983 to 1993 after his father had himself been a political exile in China, the artist said he is still "hopelessly in love with this city." He praised New York for its openness to outsiders, and as a place where "you never feel you are a foreigner."
"I need to pay back my love," Weiwei said, adding that New York is a city in which "every young artist wants to be."
Weiwei speaks at his "Gilded Cage" installation in New York's Central Park – just near Trump TowerImage: picture-alliance/AP Photo/R. Drew
"In many ways, 'Good Fences Make Good Neighbors' is the culmination of his work to date," said Nicholas Baume, Chairman of the Public Art Fund, who organized the Ai Weiwei exhibition on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the association. And New York mayor Bill de Blasio declared that New York was the "perfect canvas" for Ai Weiwei's art. "His works of art challenge us and can bring about social progress."
"Ai Weiwei is unique in having combined the roles of preeminent contemporary artist, political dissident, and human rights activist in such a prominent and powerful way,” said Baume.
Questioning identity
The large-scale installations and interactive sculptures are incorporated into urban landscapes across diverse New York districts including Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx.
Among the largest installations are three high metal fence sculptures that Ai has placed under the famous marble gateway in Washington Square Park, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens and in Central Park.
"Fences are always about identity, about the understanding of ourselves and our attitude towards others," he said. To this end, interactive elements have been installed that encourage the viewer to think where they came from – like the silver Washington Square Park fence that includes a mirrored passageway.
Visitors to this metaphorical border wall in Washington Square Park are forced to confront their own identity Image: picture-alliance/newscom/J. Angelillo
"The fence has always been a tool in the vocabulary of political landscaping and evokes associations with words like 'border,' 'security,' and 'neighbor,' which are connected to the current global political environment. But what's important to remember is that while barriers have been used to divide us, as humans we are all the same," said the artist in a statement.
Ai Weiwei has had personal experiences with exile and expulsion during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when his father, the revered poet Ai Qing, was condemned to forced labor and his family was resettled in the far west Xinjiang province.
Later in life, the artist was himself detained and imprisoned in 2011 by the Chinese regime for alleged tax evasion and his passport was taken away. In 2015, he was able to leave for Berlin, where he has lived and worked ever since.
