Tag: Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei’s ‘Zodiac’ Is a Mystical Memory Tour

Media Library

As the Year of the Dragon dawns, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has released “Zodiac,” a “graphic memoir” of scenes from his career — both real (hanging with Allen Ginsberg, the O.G. of Beat poets, in 1980s Greenwich Village) and imagined (debating Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader). Each chapter frames the artist’s take on traditional beliefs about the characteristics humans share with the 12 animals of the Chinese lunar calendar. Gianluca Costantini’s intricate line drawings pair with Elettra Stamboulis’s comic-bubble text to help expand Ai’s lifelong campaign for free expression…

London gallery delays Ai Weiwei show over Israel-Hamas tweet

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The artist Ai Weiwei has defended the importance of free speech after a London gallery put his show on hold over a tweet about the Israel-Hamas war. The exhibition of new works by the Chinese dissident, which was due to open at the Lisson gallery this week, was indefinitely put on hold after a tweet posted in response to a follower’s question on X which has since been deleted. It read: “The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the…

Ai Weiwei’s Lego re-imagining of Monet’s water lilies to go on show in London

Chin@Strategy

Claude Monet’s monumental triptych Water Lilies 1914 -26, which depicts nature’s tranquil beauty as part of the French impressionist’s world-famous series, will take on new meaning in a giant recreation by artist and activist Ai Weiwei in his new London exhibition. Monet’s brushstrokes in his water and reflection landscapes are replaced by about 650,000 studs of Lego bricks, in 22 vivid colours, in the 15-metre-long work at the centre of Weiwei’s biggest UK show in eight years, opening next month. Entitled Water Lilies #1, it is the largest Lego artwork…

Ximei review – Ai Weiwei produces inspiring portrait of Chinese Aids activist

Chin@Strategy

Produced by Ai Weiwei, this is a rousing portrait of Liu Ximei, an astonishingly resilient Aids activist; it also sheds light on a controversial government campaign that accelerated the epidemic in 1990s China. During the first half of the decade, poor farmers were encouraged to donate their blood in exchange for money. Due to a lack of health and safety standards, a staggering number of donors as well as those who received transfusions contracted HIV. In Ximei’s province of Henan, more than 300,000 villagers live with the debilitating effects of…

Ai Weiwei says mother, 90, warns him against China return

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has said his desire to be reunited with his 90-year-old mother could lead him to return to China, but that she has implored him not to give up his British exile. The sculptor and activist, who divides his time between Cambridge and Portugal, spent 81 days in custody in Beijing in 2011 and fled his home country four years later on the return of his passport. Asked by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, at an event in London whether people who…

The week in audio: Book of the Week; Start the Week; Promenade and more

Chin@Strategy

Book of the Week: 1,000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds Start the Week (BBC Radio 4) | BBC SoundsPromenade The Shift Podcast NetworkPreviously on… Succession AcastFirecrotch & Normcore Acast In 2013, Benedict Wong played the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei at the Hampstead theatre, London. The play was about the 81 days that he spent in isolated detention in 2011, having been arrested by government officials at Beijing airport. He was kept in a small, brightly lit room (the lights never went off)…