Visibilidad e inteligibilidad en Fairytale (2007) de Ai Weiwei

Abstract

Ai Weiwei, the known artist born in China in 1957, was invited to exhibit his work at the contemporary art exhibition documenta XII, Kassel, Germany. There he shows Fairytale (Bovier y Schnetz). This work is about the design of 1001 Chinese people trip to that German city on which, for five weeks, coexist daily a transcultural experience at the West–inconceivable outside of the contemporary artistic context–. The piece displayed a multidisciplinary visual arts complex which works ensembled: –cinematography, photography, architecture, design, performance art, Net Art…–. The theory and method of this work understood the enormous creative capacity of ready-made –still valid in the current art– to make visible and intelligible the active social sculpture in the contemporary art context, among other problems. In the same way, the analysis of this work also addresses the concept of visual indifference relative to the ready-made, according to Marcel Duchamp, who is based on the philosophy of Pyrrhon de Elis. The ready-made theory, shared by Ai Weiwei, has led him to point out that this concept of art has no relation with taste and can, as we will see in Fairytale, be included on this antithesis. Finally, we will analyze the way in which this work is partially different from the Duchampian notion of ready-made.