Ai Weiwei Research Articles

Mülteci Krizi Karşısında Aktivist Bir Sanatçı: Al Weiwei

This article explores the struggle of artist and activist Ai Weiwei in the face of the refugee crisis in today's world. With its critical and thought-provoking works containing politically weighted messages, he addresses the insensitivity of the contemporary world to the refugee crisis and the international artworks that challenge the barricades it has been established on the borders for everyday political purposes.
 Evaluating the multifaceted refugee crisis on the axis of contemporary art, Ai Weiwei leaves artistic reforms in social memory with works that prove the objectivity and universality of art.
 The refugee crisis, which reached its peak with the Syrian civil war in the last 10 years, has become the main theme of the works of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who is also an immigrant. He offers strong artistic forms that show his active role in developing human policies and achieving humanitarian goals with his artistic activities on the international platform.

From the Editor

From the Editor Dominic Rainsford This is a particularly international issue of Dickens Quarterly, with contributors based in China, Denmark, Japan, Israel, Latvia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This raises a dilemma when it comes to name-order. Chinese and Japanese names (as well as various others not represented in the current issue) are normally presented with the family name first, in the languages in question. Western publishers, and Western society more broadly, have largely adopted the Chinese convention, referring to “Xi Jinping” and “Ai Weiwei,” for example, rather than “Jinping Xi” and “Weiwei Ai.” On the other hand, despite some official encouragement from the Japanese government, Western sources continue to Westernize the order of Japanese names: “Fumio Kishida” and “Yayoi Kusama,” for example, instead of “Kishida Fumio” and “Kusama Yayoi.” A few Western publications–for example, The Economist–now place family names first, consistently, in the case of both Chinese and Japanese individuals, but this is still rare in academic publishing. After consulting with contributors, Dickens Quarterly has decided to proceed, for the time being, with the pragmatic solution of following the predominant Western practice for Chinese and Japanese names, respectively. This was also the choice made by Athena Press, Japan, in the case of the collection Dickens and the Anatomy of Evil, reviewed in this issue. At the same time, Athena joined many other publishers in adopting the convention of placing family names in small capitals in the table of contents, so as to avoid confusion. We have decided to do the same, in the contributor notes and abstracts as well as in the table of contents (although not in bibliographic entries, or in references within the text of articles and reviews). We will keep this matter under review as wider familiarity with different conventions develops and in light of our contributors’ views and wishes. [End Page 137] Dominic Rainsford Aarhus University Copyright © 2023 The Dickens Society

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei (review)

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei (review)

Visuality and Parrēsia: Ai Weiwei’s countervisual re-enactment of Alan Kurdi’s image

As an intervention in the study of visuality and countervisuality (Mirzoeff 2011), underscoring its connection to democracy and parrēsia (Foucault 2010), this article examines Ai Weiwei’s re-enactment of Alan Kurdi’s image in 2016. The instant and expandable polemics that characterized the reception of the re-enactment built on the unethicalness – even blatant inappropriateness – of a celebrity’s appropriation of (the graphic representation of) a dead child’s body. Building on the role of the Chinese celebrity artist-activist as a public intellectual, this article advances a way to rethink the re-enactment beyond the idea of shock and away from controversy, analyzing it as an indictment of two interrelated ‘crises’: the European refugee ‘crisis’ and the inadequate response to the influx of refugees in 2015, and the ‘crisis’ of democracy more broadly, considering that respect for human rights is integral to democratic governance. To make a case for the re-enactment as a form of countervisuality, I deploy Barthes’s theorization on the punctum and studium of photographs. The contention is that Ai’s re-enactment of Nilüfer Demir’s photo – and the controversy surrounding it – actualizes the punctum and studium of the precursor image to function as a denunciation of the ‘crises’ of our present moment.

Review: Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars, by Jill Godmilow

Review: <i>Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars</i>, by Jill Godmilow

Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic by Hentyle Yapp

Reviewed by: Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic by Hentyle Yapp Kai Hang Cheang (bio) Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic, by Hentyle Yapp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Xv + 271 pp. $25.60 paperback. ISBN: 9781478011552 Over the past few years, Asian/American cultural criticism has shown a renewed interest in China. Complicating the traditional interpretation of China as a geographical origin point for the Chinese diaspora, the Asian/American scholars behind this twenty-first-century turn to China–including Christopher B. Patterson and Y-Dang Troeung (2019), Nan Z. Da (2020), and Christopher Fan (2021)–attend to how the West's shifting significations of China and Chinese-ness in video games, science fictions, and memoirs reflect the world's imaginations of China's rise in the age of the new Cold War. Hentyle Yapp's monograph Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic imparts further nuance to the topic of China by bringing Asian/ American cultural criticism and transpacific critiques, such as Lisa Lowe's "hesitant method" and Petrus Liu's "material Marxism," to bear on analyses of post-1989 Chinese art and cultural productions to make distinctions between multiple "Chinas." Not to be confused with the two Chinas in Petrus Liu's Queer Marxism in Two Chinas (namely, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China), "minor China" is "a method that highlights the epistemological assumptions and ontological conditions [which] uphold the order of things, the major" (5), whereas, the major is the short hand for the "major narratives around resistance and romanticized notions of liberal free speech" (1). Per Yapp's characterization, Asian American studies and area studies are among the disciplines that propagate "major China," since they are driven by reading methods informed by liberal ideals like agency and subjectivity, interpretations that the critic argues flatten out subtle nuances in analyses of China. As a corrective, Yapp offers up "minor China," a "molecular" (15) interpretive method that employs fine-grained, affective, and aesthetic approaches which seek not to judge or criticize but to hesitate before, or pause and ask questions of, liberal logics of inclusion that too often value post-Tiananmen art as heroic efforts of aesthetic resistance in the face of authoritarianism. [End Page 111] Yapp exemplifies the problematic liberal logic in chapter 1 as he discusses the way China and Chinese artists were superficially included in Magiciens de la Terre (1989) despite the show's ostensible attention to China when it televised the concurrent Tiananmen Square protests. The chapter then goes on to show how the liberal logic of inclusion distracted Western curators and audiences from noticing the discursive criticisms made by Chinese artists. To make that case, Yapp turns to Cai Guo-Qiang's reproduction of Wang Guangyi's 1965 Rent Collection Courtyard for the 1999 Venice Biennale. Most critics at the Biennale focused on the grimaces on the faces of the workers and therefore framed the exhibition as a critique of socialism. Yapp argues that this understanding of Cai's piece misses a minor remedial detail: the display of the artists crafting the sculptures in front of the audience, an act that re-centers artistic labor in the installation and highlights the value of it under liberal capitalism. Chapter 2 extends the critique of the logic of inclusion by analyzing Ai Weiwei's art project Fairytale (2007). There, Yapp traces the effects of the hostility the group endured from racist Europeans and the anger that some of the tourists expressed (most memorably the Chinese woman who complained about the exclusion of her son from the tourist group because of some anti-police comments that he posted online). The "minor" here means anger and spite, which Yapp reads as affective exhortations that direct readers "to an ethics, practice and method that inquire who might been missing" (101). In chapter 3, Yapp studies Yan Xing's piece Kill (the) TV Set as well as Liu Ding, Carol Lu, and Su Wei's collective curation project Little Movement. Homing in on the "minor" (the dispassionate expression on the face of Yan in his embrace of Agu Anumudu) and ambiguous pieces like 1996.8.26, a work that shows...

BOOK REVIEW: 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

BOOK REVIEW: <i>1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows</i>

AI WEIWEI: RESISTÊNCIA DAS ARTE E O MATERIAL CULTURAL

The photo essay I present below was carried out in 2021 at the exhibition “Rapture”, by the Chinese activist and artist Ai Weiwei, held at Cordoaria Nacional, in Lisbon. Living in Portugal, this was the artist's first and largest exhibition with 85 pieces produced in various formats, materials and sizes, including cork, straw, paper, marble, clay, cloth, metal, ceramics and tiles. His versatility turns everything into art and activism, as human rights are a constant in his work, which seeks to reveal a particular way of questioning the world. Whether in the face of tragedies, war, political persecution, the environmental crisis, censorship, the pandemic, the refugee crisis or his own fight for freedom, when the Chinese government kept him imprisoned for 81 days in 2011, due to his intense criticism mainly of the disrespect for human rights. I reflect on the materials used by Weiwei as part of his culture and how this same process can be thought of in Amazonian art.

Screening postcolonial intellectuals: cinematic engagements and postcolonial activism

ABSTRACT This special issue proposes new ways of seeing and thinking about postcolonial intellectuals through the frame of transnational screens. For this purpose, the issue develops around the twofold notion of the intellectual as a filmmaker and the intellectual as an object of filmmaking. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which this interrelationship expands notions of postcolonial theory and practice regarding the aesthetic and political intervention of intellectuals in transnational screen culture. Many postcolonial figures have been influential not only in rethinking the ways in which representation should be conceived and theorized but also in inspiring new forms of visuality and aesthetics through their life and work. These figures include Frantz Fanon, Assia Djebar, and Stuart Hall, and others explored in this issue, such as Toni Morrison, Raoul Peck, Ai Weiwei, and Steve McQueen. The special issue also includes exclusive interviews with Ai Weiwei and Trinh T. Minh-ha, artists, intellectuals, activists, and filmmakers whose engagement with postcolonial debates, and more broadly with the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking, have contributed to a reshaping of contemporary postcolonial realities and discourses, in scholarship and the public sphere.

Interrogating the limits of humanitarian art: the uncomfortable invitations of Ai Weiwei

ABSTRACT Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to engage the so-called ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015. His work spans several mediums, from feature-length documentary films to gallery exhibits, public installations, and social media content. Ai has garnered both admiration and criticism for his representations of migrants and refugees, with some critics alleging Ai’s works are tone-deaf and self-serving publicity stunts that disregard the uneven power dynamics between the artist and his subjects. These critiques, however, often overlook Ai’s postcolonial positionality and the ways in which his own experiences with exile shape his approach to representing mass displacement. In this essay, I offer a reappraisal of Ai Weiwei’s work by considering how his documentary practices productively discomfit viewers and invite audiences to interrogate the limitations of humanitarian art. Through close readings of his documentary film Human Flow (2017), gallery installation Laundromat (2016), and the notorious India Today portrait of Ai Weiwei as Alan Kurdi, I show how Ai destabilizes humanitarian documentary tropes typically used to represent refugees. In doing so, Ai calls attention to the constructed nature of his own work and invites viewers to re-examine their practices of looking.

The world as a readymade: a conversation with Ai Weiwei

ABSTRACT Ai Weiwei positions himself first and foremost as a thinker, driven by curiosity and even selfishness, and not shying away from ridicule. Through immersion and direct response to different, unfamiliar conditions, he aims to defamiliarize pre-set thinking, not letting himself be trapped by rationality and led by simplified, predetermined conclusions about the world. Despite the self-proclaimed selfishness at their core, Ai’s artistic acts become selfless through resonance, inviting the viewer into his thought experiments with the world, which he engages with as if the world were a readymade. This conversation departed from the transnational film Tree (2021), where Ai meticulously documents the work of Brazilian and Chinese artisans in creating his 32-metre iron sculpture Pequi Tree (2018–2020). We began with political curiosity as a creative driver for the artist, the influence of Duchamp and Warhol, and the choice of the audiovisual medium to reflect reality. The conversation branched out to consider aesthetics, tying the issue of aestheticization to Ai’s role as a public intellectual, from an earlier refusal of aesthetics or ‘beautification’ in the interest of unmediated transparency to the realization that new aesthetics are needed for new publics.

Glasstress. A Transparent Border Between Mimicry and Mimesis

The article analyses the modern artistic process that began in the middle of the 20th century within the framework of the "craft + art" concept on the example of glassworks. The author covers two periods in the development of Murano glass. The first period is associated with the names of O.Kokoschka, P.Picasso, M.Chagall, M.Ernst, Le Corbusier, A.Calder, F.Leger, L.Fontana, H.Arp, G.Braque. At that time, an attempt to master the new plastic language of modern art space was undertaken by E.Costantini, the founder of one of the Venetian glass workshops. In the late 1940s, Costantini formulated the concept of joining a new artistic idea and technology, refined over the centuries, in Venetian glass. The new image of Murano glass of the late 20th - early 21st century is associated with the Berengo Studio, founded by Adriano Berengo in 1989. He practically adopted Costantini’s concept and invited outstanding contemporary artists: Ai Weiwei, Thomas Schütte, Jaume Plensa, the Kabakovs, Cesar, and others to work in the Murano workshops. The author analyses the “glass as an object of high art” concept on the example of the Glasstress. A Window to the Future exhibition, held at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The author believes that some artists formally exploit Venetian glass technologies and a high presentation platform, presenting works devoid of artistic significance. In this regard, the author draws on the philosophical concepts of mimicry and mimesis, believing that mimicry, in this case, is aimed at the space of high art. It reflects innovations in the artistic image and the search for a new creative method associated with the use of new material. In turn, the author believes that in the same context, a number of works can be described as mimesis - a kind of pretence, a certain result of imitation without artistic transformation.

Glass as a Fine Art Medium: Brief History and the Role of Adriano Berengo as a Fine Art Glass Impresario

This article explores the role of glass as a medium in the fine arts rather than as a craft form. It includes a short history of glass as an art medium, the development of glass technologies and their application in the field of fine art. It reflects the distinctiveness of glass as a sculptural medium due to its optical properties and transparency; glass’s inherent characteristics create the unique possibility of using the space both outside and inside a solid object. This article, furthermore, demonstrates the importance of specific individuals in bringing glass as a fine art medium to the fore, in particular Adriano Berengo. Berengo proves exceptional in promoting glass in the field of fine arts and has been particularly effective in encouraging well-known artists to experiment with it as a medium. The article discusses the impact of his efforts to establish cooperation with great names from all over the world, from Ai Weiwei to Tony Cragg and from Jaume Plensa to César, who have passed through Adriano Berengo’s studio.

Migration, Mobility and the Making of a Global Europe

In 2017–18, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei created a special installation addressing the refugee crisis in Prague. ‘Law of the Journey’ consisted of an enormous black inflatable raft, crowded with inflatable rubber people wearing lifejackets. Their human forms were clear, but they lacked faces. The raft hung from the ceiling at an angle, casting a dark shadow over a list of quotations from thinkers and writers, beginning and ending with two locals: Franz Kafka and Václav Havel. A few isolated rubber tubes floated on the concrete floor next to the raft, with rubber humans reaching out to be saved. The exhibit conveyed both the desperation of the migrants and the inadequacy of the response.

쩡판즈(曾梵志) 작품에서 보이는 동서양 혼종성 연구

Chinese contemporary art works show Western colors and geometric compositions, while Chinese social satire and critical aspects are reproduced in the subjective part. With the influx of European paintings during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), perspective was introduced in Chinese paintings, and music began to accept the concept of polyphony. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was divided into presentists and traditionalists and eventually followed the concept of pure Yachen (1866-1925), spreading to society a trend to imitate and conform to unknown Western knowledge and culture. In other words, the concept of “Let’s use Western knowledge as a basis for China’s knowledge” changed to a mixed sexual era. Nevertheless, Chinese old customs and ideas remained in art, but as the cultural revolution passed, Western art concepts and philosophy directly influenced the works of art, artists who worked in the 80s and 90s became interested in the international art market. In this paper, we are discussing artists whose Western art and Chinese materials have been mixed and fused since the Cultural Revolution, and among them, Zheng Fanzhi is studying the hybridity that appeared in Chinese modern art. The first and second chapter focuses on the historical background when it was mixed with Western art, and compares and analyzes the hybrid characteristics of Wang Guamgyi, Ai Weiwei, and Yue Minjun and the hybridity of Zeng Fanzhi. In the last chapter, we will analyze the meaning of mask in Francis Bacon and Max Beckmann’s works and Zeng Fanzhi’s mask in his works.

Visuelle oder klangliche Spuren?

This article focuses on the emerging ethnographic field 'refugee camp' and the challenges it poses in terms of an "engaged ethnomusicology" inscribed into a larger discussion about "public ethnography" and ethically informed collaborative practices. The prevailing focus of mass media and artists serves as a starting point, as they represent migratory phenomena primarily through the visual lens, through material artefacts, denying their multisensory character, particularly their immaterial and sonic aspects. Taking as examples the artistic work of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and exhibition concepts presented at the documenta 14 and at the Biennale in Venice 2019, the article questions the predominance of the material approach, the inaudibility of migration because of its compatibility with our "museological thinking'" and an abstract idea of "cultural heritage" as promoted by established cultural institutions in Western Europe. The article argues that sound should instead be taken more seriously into consideration. This includes reflecting on the prominent links between human existentiality and suffering, as well as musical production and performance. It is argued that the temporariness of refugee's musical practice is related to their precarious life conditions in camps suspended in time and space. As practical examples from the French camp of Calais demonstrate, music making in this context offers refugees one possible way to counter-act imposed policies of infantilization, passivity and an omnipresent experience of waiting. In a situation where creative space and musical instruments are a limited resource, social media and music apps generate particular forms of musical creativity and assume a fundamental role which should be acknowledged in research to a larger extent. Such conditions influence also largely the ways in which migrated musicians construct their self-image as "refugee musicians". Taking as an example Syrian pianist Aeham Ahmad, the article shows that such self and foreign attributions may be reductive and result in an ethically problematic branding with commercial intentions. The second part of the article presents a collaborative grassroot-music theatre project realized in a German Erstaufnahmeeinrichtung over a span of 4 months. It offers insights into the limitations of "making audible", or "voicing migrants" everyday concerns through artistic practice. It also questions the idea of developing an "artistic agency" and an equal "cultural participation" in a working context characterized by social and power hierarchies, emotional instabilities, and a constant flow of individuals and ideas. In this context the role of the ethnomusicologist as a (cultural) translator with multiple responsibilities is crucial. Not only does he/she balance out different levels of musical professionality or different aesthetic preferences, but he/she also opens up spaces for creativity for disadvantaged or marginalized individuals in the camps. On another level the researcher's responsibility lies in the task to make practices public which originally were self-referential or of local relevance in a socially segregated space. Despite numerous obstacles to make such interventions "culturally sustainable", the article shows the potentiality of producing bottom-up "counter-images" or "counter-soundings', which could generate counter-discourses to the main media narratives on migration.

Salvaging hope: Representing the objects of Mediterranean migration

This article contributes to a scholarly conversation about humanitarianism and the representation of refugees by interpreting how and why visual artists use maritime safety objects to intervene in the European migrant crisis. The amalgamated detritus of life jackets, parts of rubber dinghies, and other refuse from migrant crossings that have been left behind on the island of Lesbos, Greece have inspired contemporary artistic interpretations. This article argues that images and installations of emergency floatation devices mobilize affective qualities associated with maritime survival objects as a way to convey the promise and failure of contemporary nation-states to maintain humanitarian goals toward refugees. Analyzing Ai Weiwei's film and installations in Central Europe as a case in point, this article argues that representations of such devices draw critical attention to discourses of crisis, emergency, safety, and waste. This article challenges the idea that these kinds of object-centered artistic works further marginalize refugees. It proposes instead that such works function as powerful mediators in bringing together places proximate and distant from the scene of crisis, and in doing so promote a kind of ethical solicitation for change. Looking critically at these projects, this article closes by assessing the possibilities and limits of such object-centered appeals.

Contributors

Contributors

Aylan Kurdi’den Sonra: Sanatta Göçün Kaydı

Binlerce yıl öncesinde yaşam biçimi olan göçebelik, bireylerin ve toplumların hayatını şekillendiren bir fiil olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Neolitik devrimle yerleşik düzene geçen insanoğlu temel barınma ve beslenme ihtiyaçlarını karşılayabildiği alanlarda hayatlarına devam etmiştir; ancak göç hareketleri son bulmamış ve çağlar boyunca kültürlerarası etkileşime katkı yapmaya devam etmiştir. Tercih sonucu ya da zorunlu bir fiil olan göç; bireysel ve toplumsal düzeyde birçok farklı etki yarattığı gibi sanat alanında da birtakım yansımalar ve etkiler ile karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Göç ve göçmenlik kavramları üzerinden kişisel fikirlerini farklı disiplinler aracılığı ile izleyiciye aktaran sanatçılar, kendi deneyimlerini ya da göç ile sonuçlanmış savaşlar, afetler, açlık gibi toplum belleğinde yer edinmiş birçok olay veya durumu ele alarak incelemiştir. Sinema, edebiyat ve tiyatro gibi çeşitli alanlarda nesne edinilen göç; plastik sanatlar alanında da sıklıkla kullanılmaktadır. Dünya toplumu birçok göç hareketine ve buna bağlı olarak birçok trajediye şahitlik etmiştir ancak; yaşanan bazı olaylar büyük çapta etkiler yaratmıştır. Aylan Kurdi ve ailesinin 2015 yılında çıktığı göç yolunda trajik biçimde hayatlarını kaybetmesi de yakın zamanda yaşanan büyük trajedilerden biridir ve bu çalışmada Aylan Kurdi üzerinden işlenerek, göç teması etrafında şekillenen sanat eserleri incelenmiş, yaşanan olayın plastik sanatlara yansımaları Ai Weiwei, Banksy, Pekka Jylhä gibi seçilmiş sanatçıların yapıtları özelinde değerlendirilmiştir.

Revising the Canon: How Andy Warhol Became the Most Important American Modern Artist

Quantitative analysis of narratives of art history published since 2000 reveals that scholars and critics now judge that Andy Warhol has surpassed Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns as the most important modern American painter. Auction prices suggest that collectors share this opinion. Disaggregated analysis of the published narratives by decade reveals that Warhol first gained clear critical recognition as the leading Pop artist in the 1990s, and then as the most important American artist overall in the 2000s. This rise in Warhol’s status appears initially to have been a result of his enormous influence on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and others in the cohort that transformed the New York art world in the 1980s, and subsequently of his persisting influence on leading artists around the world who have emerged since the 1990s, including Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and Ai Weiwei. Warhol’s many radical conceptual innovations, that transformed both the appearance of art and the behavior of artists, made him not only the most important American artist, but the most important Western artist overall of the second half of the twentieth century.