Ai Weiwei – Creating Under Imminent Threat
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is as well known for his art as for his activism. A steadfast critic of the Chinese government, Ai has been denied a passport for over four years and has been unable to leave or exhibit work in his native country.
Photograph by Harry Pearce Pentagram 2015
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is as well known for his art as for his activism.
A steadfast critic of the Chinese government, Ai has been denied a passport for over four years and has been unable to leave or exhibit work in his native country.
Recently Weiwei posted a photograph online of him holding up his newly returned passport and announced that he has also been granted an extended six-month visa to visit the UK, which he will coordinate with his Royal Academy retrospective.
On the 19th of September 2015, The Royal Academy will host the first major retrospective of his work, showing works from his entire oeuvre. From the smashing of a Han Dynasty vase (which will appear in the show), to the poignant critique of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed over 5,000 Chinese children, Weiwei’s work is bold, controversial and unforgiving.
All the works in this show have all been created since 1993, the date when Weiwei returned to his native China from America. This exhibition will show works that have never before been seen in this country, and many have been created specifically for this venue, Weiwei navigating the space digitally from China.
Often labeled as an activist or a political artist, this social conscience is what has influenced most of his works to date. Living under constant imminent threat from those with absolute authority, Weiwei’s work is created out of adversity and struggle. His oppressors are ones who are able to work above and therefore outside the law, and for that reason his struggle is a very real one. Despite this, Weiwei will not be defeated, and continues to critique the government and its actions towards the Citizens of his beloved China.
In a career spanning over three decades, his hand has also been turned to: activism, architecture, publishing, and curation, in a tour de force of creative activity. The artist worked alongside Herzog & de Meuron (the same company to design the Tate Modern in 1995) to design the 2008 Beijing National Olympic Stadium (commonly known as the Birdsnest). This project was born from a building Ai designed nine years before, when he needed a new studio, and decided to simply build it himself.
This confident disregard for convention is the attitude with which he approaches all of his work, and it has gained him many critics. The most notable of which being the Chinese government themselves, who have arrested him, seized his assets, terrified his wife and child, tracked him daily, tapped his phones, and rescinded his passport.
Perhaps most well known for his Sunflower Seeds artwork, in which he filled Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds. Each seed was hand crafted and painted by hundreds of Chinese citizens from the city of Jingdezhen, in a process that took many years. Visitors to the show were overwhelmed to see the vast expanse of seeds, and were originally invited to walk and sit upon them, interacting with the work in a way in which we are rarely allowed to. (For safety reasons this was later disallowed)
The sunflower seeds appeared uniform but upon close inspection revealed themselves to be minutely unique, created using centuries-old techniques that have been passed down through generations.
In the Chinese culture sunflowers are extremely important, Chairman Mao would use the symbology of the sunflower to depict his leadership, himself being the sun, whilst those loyal to his cause were the sunflowers. In Weiwei’s opinion, sunflowers supported the whole revolution, both spiritually and materially. In this artwork, Weiwei supported an entire village for years, as well as creating something that promotes an interesting dialogue about the very culture that created it.
Weiwei’s work is about people, about the often nameless many who are oppressed or ignored. It is about justice for those who have been abandoned or neglected by those who are there to protect them, and it is most primarily about their basic human rights.
It is tragically ironic that those human rights that he has worked so tirelessly to protect for others are those denied him by his own government.
The Royal Academy has turned to Crowdfunding to help raise £100,000 to bring the centerpiece of the exhibition to Britain. Weiwei’s reconstituted Trees will sit in the exterior courtyard and be free to view for all. The campaign has just over a week left and still needs to raise just over 25% of its target.
Get involved here
The show will be on between
September 19th – December 13th 2015
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
All images courtesy of Royal Academy
The Guerrilla Girls turned 30; let’s talk about women
Inspired by the social activist group Guerrilla Girls, we take a look at some important female artists working now.
With contemporary art having a great focus on social and political issues and agendas, the subject of equality between the sexes in the art world is an important subject under much debate. Many say female artists are not given fair treatment or enough exposure by the art institutions however others argue that there are plenty of female artists and that it is the pay that is widely unequal.
Many female artists directly address the topic of gender inequality in both art and society as a whole. The anonymous group known as Guerrilla Girls is a massive source of feminist activist inspiration for bringing about racial and gender equality. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the group's founding, we think now is an especially relevant time to look at some women who make a significant contribution to art and creativity.
Michele Abeles’ work is about digital age of images, commodity and how people are reduced to being as insignificant as mundane objects. She combines everyday objects with nude males, using a photography process that flattens the collage of objects and people into a camouflaged Where’s Wally work which slowly reveals more parts of itself as the viewer looks on, literally reducing people to consumable generic items. For the artist, the nudes photographed in her work are as insignificant as the objects surrounding it. Abeles uses copyrighted images found on Google and edits them to create altered scales making the image almost surreal. This work is in response to how images are viewed in the digital age. We see so many layers of visual information, how much do we absorb it and in what way?
The infamous Tracey Emin is most famous for works like Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, a tent with walls of appliquéd names inside and My Bed, an installation of Emin’s unmade bed of used condoms and bloody, dirty underwear. Despite this work being some years ago now, Emin is still very present in contributing to the art world as well as selling her work to high bidders. She is an important role model as a successful and motivated female artist who makes no apologies.
Who Made Your Pants is a campaign running in Southampton, England. Becky John founds the brand and she buys material from big underwear companies at the end of the season to prevent it being wasted. Formed especially to empower women, the co-operative employ female refugees through support agencies to make and sew the pants. However, they also run kind of pop up environments where the customer can chose the fabric and sew their own pair of pants. This kind of work, I believe, is a very effective way of bringing participation based social art into the public sphere and addressing the taboo of making money from conceptual art.
Ghada Amers work addresses gender and sexuality within art using embroidery and paint to reference abstracted pornographic images of women. She challenges the male dominance and ownership of art. She uses paint abstractly, which she sees as having been made symbolic and dominant in history by men. And so by using this, she is occupying a territory, which has previously been denied to women. Simultaneously, by using uses embroidery, a practice associated with the feminine, to make a further political statement about gender.
Kara Walker uses black paper cut outs to make silhouettes exploring race, gender, sexuality and other social issues. She depicts sex and slavery and deems the viewers discomfort necessary when confronted with this. Her work investigates the dark capabilities of what people can and have done throughout history, and investigates the inability to accept the past.
The argument that feminism is no longer necessary because the sexes are equal is a statement that is wildly inaccurate due to many reasons in western culture alone, without taking into account the many parts of the world in which women aren’t afforded basic human rights. We still a long way to go inside and outside of art until we reach equality but these artists are a part of making that a reality.
Art and activism; French supermarkets and food waste in the UK
With the recent news of France’s new law prohibiting supermarkets from discarding edible food, there has been a sharp increase in discussion about food waste in the public eye.
With the recent news of France’s new law prohibiting supermarkets from discarding edible food, there has been a sharp increase in discussion about food waste in the public eye.
France’s new food waste law is certainly a step in the right direction regarding responsible management of waste by corporations; however, this triumph is only a small part of the way to go and is problematic in many ways. Though public perception may see this development as the supermarket waste problem solved, many UK supermarkets have been claiming for years that they send their food waste to charities. This may be a surprise to those celebrating the Tesco CEO’s only recent public commitment to do the same; Tesco are possibly just catching up with their competitors. Waitrose’s website for example states that food fit for consumption is donated to local charities. From my own experience of dumpster diving, I know for a fact that this is incredibly misleading at the very least. My friends and I have recovered over a tonne in a few months from supermarket bins in one town.
Another issue with the French law is that it doesn’t address the cause for so much waste, the problem is simply being redirected, the responsibility is being passed on. Many charities that gratefully accept donations of food are given much more than they can distribute, meaning they still have to throw it away and in addition they must pay for the waste disposal. It is also unlikely that charities will have an arrangement for anaerobic digestion and so the food ends up in landfill, a worse fate than before. Companies like FareShare in the UK accept food from supermarkets and distribute it to charities. However, Fareshare disposes of donated food after a certain time period of having received it regardless of its use by date.
With waste being wrapped in so many layers of secrecy, law and bureaucracy it can leave individuals feeling powerless and uncertain of how to make an impact or change but there are many artists and movements in the UK taking action within their community to get people talking and bring these issues to the public agenda.
Disco Soup is a food waste movement sweeping Europe, an unlikely combination of food waste, cooking and disco. Originating in Germany as Schnippel Disko organised by Slow Food Youth Deutschland, the movement has been going strong for a few years now, recently having grown to be very popular in France as Disco Soupe. At these events, participants peel and cut salvaged veg in a party environment to create a dish to eat. The movement carries with it no element of monetary exchange, no sense of entitlement but a whole lot of community atmosphere. It is free flowing, anyone can organise one; simply combine a venue, a DJ, food waste and lots of dance ready participants.
Another inspirational and devoted activist in food waste is Louiza Hamidi, an artist I lived with and collaborated with during our degree. We continue to work together with our pop up installation/participation Food Waste Café, where we cook and serve food waste to visitors in a restaurant setting but aside from that Louiza is incredibly active with food waste in her community. She now runs Curb, an active food waste campaign operating on a pay as you feel basis, investing a great deal of time into collecting food waste from supermarkets and distributing it to the public. Despite the legally questionable ground of distributing food that has passed its sell by date, she is persistence and challenges the logic and validity of these laws allowing such waste to continue.
Artists like these are part of the driving force for changes in law, attitude and practices regarding waste, if not ethical conduct entirely. Although the fight to stop waste has already been going for decades, now is an important time to focus on waste and artists who work with these issues are crucial to inspire and motivate others to take direct action in combating them. Despite any criticisms France's new law faces, it reflects that this is an issue the public care about, it means supermarkets are legally bound to do what they claim to do already and it is certainly a step in the right direction.