Wachtel on the Arts - Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been called "the most powerful artist in the world" and "a contemporary icon of resistance." He's reached an almost unprecedented level of international fame, both for his powerful work and his tough political criticism. He talks to Eleanor Wachtel about his beautiful and subversive art and about his fight for freedom and democracy in China.
 

Ai Weiwei has reached an almost unprecedented level of international fame for an artist – as much for his status as a prominent critic of China's authoritarian regime as for his powerful work. It blends Chinese history and craft, with hard politics and the formal language of contemporary art.
 
His 2010 exhibition Sunflower Seeds filled the Tate Modern's massive Turbine Hall with a hundred million handcrafted, porcelain sunflower seeds. The seeds referred to both the Cultural Revolution – when official propaganda depicted Mao as the sun and the Chinese people as sunflowers turning towards him – and the current "Made in China" phenomenon.  It also invites viewers to consider the relationship between the individual and the masses.  As The New York Times put it: "The profound resonance, hinged on an axis of sameness and difference, was stark, beautiful, haunting."
 
Another work, Snake City, shows hundreds of children's knapsacks woven together in the shape of a coiled snake and attached to the gallery ceiling. It's a response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people, including more than 5,000 children who died when their shoddily-built schools collapsed.
 
It was around then that I first heard about Ai Weiwei. I went to Beijing in advance of the Olympics to interview artists, architects and writers.  Ai Weiwei was already famous as the co-designer of the National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, consulting with the Swiss architects, Herzog and de Meuron.  A project he later distanced himself from because of government repression and surveillance, as well as their response to the Sichuan earthquake.
 
Ai Weiwei had also been involved in developing an art complex on the outskirts of Beijing. It included not only his studio and home, where he still lives for part of the year, but a whole range of galleries and the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. In one space, a Swiss-Chinese gallery, I remember seeing a diorama featuring life-size artists, including Ai Weiwei. 
 
But while his image was on display there, he was actively involved in uncovering the truth of the Sichuan earthquake. He took the unprecedented step of challenging the government's official mortality reports, which vastly understated the number of schoolchildren that had died.
 
Together with volunteers he gathered through the Internet, Ai Weiwei went town to town and door to door in Sichuan, talking to the families of the children who had been killed. Then he published their names, birthdays, and other information on his website. This is what ultimately led to his arrest and detention. 
 

First, in 2011, the government bulldozed his art studio in Shanghai.
 
Then, he was detained – without clear charges – for 81 days. He was held in a tiny cell with two uniformed prison guards standing over him at all times. His family didn't know where he was. 

Selected works by Ai Weiwei
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