On April 3, 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained by Chinese authorities on charges of tax evasion and was held in detention for eighty-one days. One cannot help but wonder what would have happened had there not been such a vociferous outcry by the international community. “Everything is art. Everything is politics,” Weiwei said, his life a testament to what happens when the heart of the artist is activism.
Weiwei questions, and his questioning is enough to become a threat to a country as powerful as his homeland China has become. He observes, “In China, there is a long history of the government not revealing information, so it’s difficult for the Chinese people to ever know the truth. It is vital that we try to bring that truth to life.” And so it is that Weiwei uses his art to spark a dialogue.
On the occasion of Weiwei’s solo exhibition at the Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the artists releases two new books that bring art and activism to the forefront. The first is According to What? (DelMonico/Prestel), a traditional monograph of Weiwei’s work in multiple media including photography, video, sculpture, and architecture. The second is Weiwei-isms (Edited by Larry Warsh, Princeton University Press) charming pocket volume of quotes on freedom, expression, art, activism, government, the Internet, history and the future.
“Art is not an end but a beginning,” Weiwei states, and so it has come to pas that it is he who is opening up a profound and provocative cultural exchange. If the people of China know little of the truth, they are not alone. We, too, in the Western world, are heirs to a great swatch of misinformation. For Weiwei to be so bold as to challenge his country’s veracity in the face of the world, to risk imprisonment and all that it entangles, forces us to look more closely at just what it is he is fighting for. “Not an inch of the land belongs to you, but every inch could easily imprison you,” Weiwei states. Indeed, this goes for all of us, lest we forget how many people are falsely imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
According to What? Is more than a book title, it is a coda for life. As Weiwei reminds us in the book’s introduction, “Our thoughts about art, culture, morality, philosophy, and rationality are closely related to a judgment about value. Society’s collective judgment established our views of reality and what is deemed acceptable. These beliefs must exists in order for people to have a sense of security. To encroach on those fixed notions of the world is to question our fundamental state of mind. Art should always play on that understanding. It should create room for us to reconsider our reality.”
Reconsidering our reality, this is where Weiwei excels. His art reminds us that seeing is not believing, that there is another deeper layer to be explored. There is a triptych of black and white photographs titled, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” where Weiwei comfortably challenges our preconceived ideas about the value of art, civilization, history. About powers that have been and the powers that be. In order to create, here he must destroy and it is a fascinating look at the way in which we have co-opted value and conferred it upon the object as a means to creating a co-operative sense of worth.
According to What? describes this act as a performance, and perhaps that is the preferred term though in our society it implies an act, as in a false construction, which makes his actions all the more provocative. Is Weiwei telling us his Truth, or is he simply questioning our own—and does it matter what he believes if we come to question the way we look at the world?
Here the photograph exists as a stand in for the act, and it is a statement to the power of the still image that Weiwei chose the triptych over the moving image. It is slow, slower, slowest, it is the only way we can be a part of the action without moving forward. We can look at the vase forever falling and never see it crash. We can go backwards and come around again. The photograph is here to remind us that somehow the vase is always here, always falling, always broken.
“I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art,” Weiwei determines. And so it is the more we consider the art, the more we consider the artist, as the two are inextricably entwined. Perhaps Weiwei’s greatest gift would be inspiring us to question his questions so that we free our minds. His art and ideas are a starting point for us to explore our own life and times. Weiwei inspiringly states, “After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and an attitude than producing some product.”
In the spirit of Ai Weiwei, I delightfully suggest we begin to question everything, including these words.
Miss Rosen
