Image via Complex Original
Ai Weiwei, internationally renowned artist and activist, uses art in a variety of ways, including to challenge the Chinese government and to comment on the superficiality of consumer culture. He is perhaps most well-known for his "Bird's Nest" collaboration with architects Herzog & de Meuron—a stadium he co-designed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and later said he regretted because, "It was merely a stage for a political party to advertise its glory to the world."
Ai Weiwei has dedicated himself to preserving human rights and freedom. He uses the Internet to spread information that the government has tried to hide and makes political statements with his art. The Chinese government has made many attempts to silence him, including destroying his studio, physically beating him, detaining him for 81 days, putting him under house arrest and constant surveillance, and confiscating his passport. Despite oppression, Ai Weiwei cannot be deterred.
His upcoming exhibition, "@Large: Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz," will center on issues of human rights, activism, and incarceration with seven site-specific installations, including "Trace," a giant lego portrait of 176 political prisoners from around the world. The exhibition will be on view from Sept. 27 - April 26. Before you admire his newest work, do your homework and familiarize yourself with 20 Ai Weiwei Pieces You Should Know.
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp in a Coat Hanger (1986)
Ai Weiwei left Beijing when he was 24 and spent a decade living in New York's East Village neighborhood. While living there, he grew as an artist and learned about American culture and art, particularly the work of Marcel Duchamp. This homage to the inventor of the readymade is a portrait of Duchamp in the form of a bent coathanger.
Untitled (1993)
Duchamp's influence on Weiwei's work is obvious in this untitled piece, which Ai created by placing a Chinese figurine inside of an empty Johnnie Walker Scotch bottle. Perhaps the readymade amalgamation represents how the artist felt living in New York. He did assemble it during his last year living in America before returning to Beijing, after all.
Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (1994)
Critics were appalled when Weiwei unveiled this piece, where he transformed an ancient piece of Chinese ceramic pottery into a vessel bearing the popular American symbol of consumerism (by Warhol's standards, at least). As far as conceptual art goes, the urn is a straightforward representation of the conflict between old and new worlds. Swiss art collector Uli Sligg acquired it and more than a decade later destroyed it in an imitation of Weiwei's Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995)
The year after creating Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo, Weiwei unveiled an even bolder creation…in the form of destruction. He made a photographic triptych of him holding and then dropping an ancient urn. In the final panel, it is in pieces at his feet. He broke the urn to criticize the recent sacrifice of historical sites in order to make way for new developments in China, and perhaps also to criticize our age's neglect towards historical, cultural craft as a whole. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn inspired copycats, most notably a man who stormed into a Weiwei exhibition in Miami and broke another urn in protest.
Fairytale (2007)
Weiwei brought Fairytale with him to Kassel, Germany for the Documenta art show. It was the most expensive exhibition there. Fairytale consisted of 1,001 of Weiwei's fellow Chinese citizens, who he flew to the art show. The people who participated as part of the exhibition were allowed to wander freely throughout the city for the duration of the show and were encouraged to interact with spectators, locals, and other artworks. Weiwei also displayed 1,001 chairs with the piece.
Map of China (2008)
Once again, Ai Weiwei creates art from artifact. Map of China, the massive relief map of China, was assembled out of wood taken from ancient Qing Dynasty temples. Its massive size reflects both China's high population density and its influence on an international scale, while the composition evokes thoughts about how modern culture often takes history for granted. The piece toured with his “According to What?” exhibition and was at the Brooklyn Museum in April.
Marble Chair (2008)
Though they have been separated and call various museums home, Weiwei's Marble Chair is actually a numbered series of marble chairs. Each is carved from a solid block of marble and inspired by the yoke-back chair that Weiwei's family was allowed to keep when they were exiled during his childhood.
Cube Light (2008)
Cube Light is part of a series of chandeliers that Weiwei created in the late 2000s. Gigantic in scale, each one takes up 14 cubic feet and is comprised of thousands of tiny glass crystals. The extravagant structure is more eye-catching than some of Weiwei's other pieces yet still brings to mind conceptual questions about overabundance.
Straight (2008-12)
In 2008, an earthquake killed thousands of schoolchildren in Sichuan. Poor infrastructure led to these unnecessary deaths that were, essentially, covered up by the government. Ai Weiwei took it upon himself to discover and publicly release the names of all the victims by going with volunteers and speaking to surviving family members. Straight is made of rebar recovered from the scene of the tragedy. Ai Weiwei laboriously straightened each piece and arranged them to create a fissure, representative of a divide in values and a cultural desire to forget the past.
Remembering (2009)
In honor of the young lives lost in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, Weiwei created an installation on the facade of a museum in Munich. The mural consisted of 9,000 children's backpacks and spells out words from one of the mothers who lost a daughter: “She lived happily for seven years in this world.” The poignant and gigantic installation was both a memorial and a political statement about the corruption of government.
Snake Ceiling (2009)
Another piece commenting on the Chinese government's reaction to the tragic 2008 earthquake, Snake Ceiling is a massive serpentine structure made of children's backpacks. The backpacks range in size to represent the various ages represented among the victims. The insidious form of the snake and its ominous presence on the ceiling creates a haunting homage to the young lives lost.
Sunflower Seeds (2010)
In 2010, one hundred million porcelain sunflower seed sculptures, painstakingly painted by artisans in Jingdezhen, China, graced the floor of the Tate Modern. The installation comments on mass-production and China's export industry. Initially, Weiwei meant for visitors to be able to walk up and touch the sunflower seeds, but health concerns about porcelain dust led the museum to disallow interaction with them soon after the installation's opening.
He Xie (River Crab) (2010-)
Similar to Sunflower Seeds in its many pieces, He Xie consists of 3,200 porcelain crab sculptures. They were created after Chinese authorities ransacked and destroyed Weiwei's studio in 2010 and were accompanied by a feast of real river crabs that Weiwei hosted, yet was unable to attend, due to his house arrest. The term “He Xie” is a homophone for “harmonious” in Chinese and has also become a term for internet censorship.
Colored Vases (2010)
In a return to his days of modifying ancient sculpture, Weiwei added ordinary household paints onto a series of Neolithic urns. Besides being beautiful, the pottery explores the lack of expression in modern mass-production as well as the contemporary conception of authenticity. The artist says, in reference to the collection, “by changing the meaning of the object, shaking its foundation, we are also changing our own condition. We can question what we are.”
Circle of Animals (2011)
Ai Weiwei's first public sculpture installation, Circle of Animals is his recreation of the collection of Zodiac heads that graced the royal gardens during the Qing dynasty. European soldiers looted the property during the Second Opium War in 1860, and the Zodiac sculptures were lost. Through his reassembly of the sculptures, Weiwei replaces a precious symbol of Chinese pride, and through its international tour schedule, he makes a traditionally elite art form accessible to all.
S.A.C.R.E.D. (2011-13)
In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested and detained for 81 days without any formal conviction. Set inside a Baroque-style cathedral, S.A.C.R.E.D. documents his experience as a prisoner. Each letter in the name represents part of his life in prison, as explained in its subtitle: “(i) Supper (eating), (ii) Accusers (interrogation), (iii) Cleansing (shower), (iv) Ritual (walking), (v) Entropy (sleep), (vi) Doubt (toilet).” Each of these six elements is shown in six black steel boxes, whose imposing yet simple presence in the exhibit represents the stripped-down version of life that Weiwei was forced to live. The autobiographical installation is chilling yet reassuring, in that it proves that Weiwei's activism has been fueled further by his oppression, rather than extinguished.
Weiwei Cam (2012)
On the one-year anniversary of being taken into custody, Weiwei began a tongue-in-cheek self-surveillance project, in which he set up four video cameras around his home and broadcasted a live stream at weiweicam.com. Because he was already under excessive video camera surveillance, he undertook the project to increase his transparency further and to invite the public to spy on his daily life, as well as the authorities. Less than two days after installing the cameras, Weiwei was ordered to take them down.
Fragments (2012)
Composed of ancient wood from Qing dynasty temples and built using an ancient technique that doesn't utilize nails, the massive yet delicate Fragments at first appears to be a chaotic, forest-like conglomeration. However, when viewed from above, the pillars form a map of China. The precarious nature of the structure reflects the country's tenuous international relations and the arbitrary quality of geographic boundaries.
Forever (2013)
Weiwei returns to the concepts of mass-production and copying in this installation, which consists of 1,179 bicycle frames that are assembled in different geometric shapes as they make stops around the world. The title of the installation is taken from a popular Chinese bicycle manufacturer named “Yong Jiu” or “Forever.” Most recently, Forever was arranged in Venice for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennial.
The Divine Comedy (2013)
In June of last year, Weiwei released his first studio album to commemorate the two-year anniversary of his release from detention. The album includes his single, “Dumbass,” and five other songs, which are all about the political and social situation in China. The album wasn't exactly a big hit but deserves recognition as a bold, solitary endeavor.