Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.

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COPYRIGHT ©: TANIA BECKER

So sorry – Never sorry. Ai Weiwei’s Art between Tradition

and Modernity
Tania BECKER*

Abstract

Ai Weiwei’s 艾未未 (b. 1957) artistic expression revolves around his use of traditional
Chinese techniques to create new designs and forms, shaping traditional materials into
contemporary configurations. His art encompasses almost all visual disciples, including
architecture, photography, performance art, film, video art and environmental art, and
explores the genres of objets trouvées, works in progress, conceptual art, social sculpture
and social projects. Use of the Internet and mobile communications technology also
informs his artistic message. He interweaves these genres with clear political statements,
pushing against the limits of contemporary Chinese politics. Ai Weiwei is an all-round
artist: he presents his whole life as a work of art open to the public. Through his artworks
he denounces the economic exploitation, human rights violations and environmental
pollution present in today’s China, in particular by employing traditional motifs such as
Han dynasty-era vessels, ancient Chinese vases, and Ming and Qing period furniture. The
creative alienation encapsulated in these objects leads to a re-contextualization of Chinese
tradition and, in addition, transforms their meaning. In the face of obstruction from state
officials and local politicians, Ai Weiwei exposes himself to considerable personal risk in
order to continue his activities as an artist and stay loyal to his convictions. This paper
examines the roots of Ai Weiwei's work in Chinese art history and looks at how the artist
has deliberately adapted traditional motifs to bring about a sense of alienation. Ai
Weiwei’s unique stance between current trends in western art and the Chinese feeling for
handicrafts is also explored.
Keywords: traditional Chinese materials, contemporary art, Chinese politics, re-
contextualization of Chinese tradition.

* Tania Becker, M.A. Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Zagreb, Croatia; M.A. Philosophie und
Geschichte Chinas, Ostasienwissenschaften, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany; Ph.D. Candidate,
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Fernblick 16, 42279 Wuppertal, BRD, tania.becker@gmx.de.
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

1 A Year in the Life of Ai Weiwei

When in October 2009 Haus der Kunst in Munich opened the large retrospective
exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s 艾未未 works entitled ‘So sorry’1, nobody anticipated
the extent to which the presentation of this artist’s work become so politically
controversial in the months that followed. In the run-up to the exhibition, Ai
Weiwei was beaten by police in Chengdu and, as a direct result of the injuries he
sustained, was later treated in a Munich hospital. Further conflicts with the
authorities in Sichuan ensued (Osnos 2010), and he organized a demonstration in
early 2010 in Beijing to draw attention to the plight of a group of artists threatened
by local authorities with eviction (Lorenz 2010). On October 8, 2010 Ai described
the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波 (born 1955) both in his
own blog and on Twitter as the happiest moment in the history of the People’s
Republic (Hahn 2010). And when he was prevented from leaving the country
shortly before the award ceremony, this did not go unnoticed by the international
press (BBC News 2010).

A highly provocative action directed at Chinese officialdom was the

announcement by Ai Weiwei in November 2010 that he would mark the forced
demolition of his Shanghai studio with a party at which river crabs would be
served. The artist was promptly placed under house arrest for seven days in
Beijing. His friends and supporters staged the party in Shanghai without him under
the watchful eye of the secret police, the press, and onlookers round the world.
Ai’s recently built and costly art studio was bulldozed away shortly afterwards
(ArtSchool Vets! 2011).

But it is not only in China that Ai Weiwei’s art stirs considerable controversy,
causing him a lot of problems and attracting much media attention. Like all
unusual new ideas or attempts to confront the public with something different,
something previously not seen, his works are an irritant to the pertinent authorities,

* Tania Becker, M.A. Filozofski fakultet, Sveuciliste Zagreb, Croatia; M.A. Department of Chinese
Philosophy and History, Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany; Ph.D.
candidate, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Fernblick 16, 42279 Wuppertal, Germany;
Tania.becker@gmx.de

1
‚Ai Weiwei – So sorry’, 12.10.2009 – 17.1.2010, Haus der Kunst, Munich.
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

whether these are conservationists or public health agencies. Thus, after just four
days on show in the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern2, his Sunflower seed
installation was roped off to visitors on health grounds. As a result, the interactive
and hands-on character of the artwork was lost (Herzog 2011). Another case in
point is Ai Weiwei’s contribution to the Regionale 10 festival in Austria: this
involved the placement of a four-ton boulder from the earthquake region in
Sichuan on the Dachstein, the highest peak in the Steiermark. The Austrian Alps
Society protested sharply against the project on environmental grounds (Spiegler
2010).

Since his exhibition in Munich, then, much has happened to Ai Weiwei in

terms both of his artistic production and his political activism. But if things had
been quiet, that would be a clear indication that his art had missed its target.

2 The Artist as Political Activist

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 as the son of Ai Qing 艾青 (1910-1996), one of the
most renowned communist poets in the early years of the People’s Republic. After
his father was banished to the provinces in 1958, he was raised in Manchuria and
Xingjiang. He enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy at the age of 21. His fellow-
students included Chen Kaige 陈凯歌 (born 1952) and Zhang Yimou 张艺谋
(born 1951), who later became prominent film makers. Between 1981 and 1993 he
lived and worked in New York, where he immersed himself in contemporary
Western art forms and encountered performance, photography and conceptual art.
When his father fell ill, Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing in 1993. “So sorry” said the
authorities when they rehabilitated his father in 1979. “So sorry”, that’s all, for 20
years in exile. These two words have become a kind of leitmotif in Ai’s art, they
are a constant incentive for his outrage at the actions of the Chinese regime: its pro
forma apologies, or its failure to apologize, its cover-up of tragedies or of
institutional or human misconduct, and its refusal to provide proper information
and to take personal responsibility. All of this fuels Ai Weiwei’s actions and
initiatives in which he exposes the lack of political integrity of this great and
increasingly confident political power. According to Ai, as long as the government
persists in its present policies and as long as there is unwillingness to accept

2
Sunflower seeds, 12.10.2010 – 2.5.2011, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London.
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

responsibility, it will not be possible to build a genuine civil, democratic society

(Dercon et al. 2009, 8).

In an interview with former CNN correspondent Christian Amanpour, Ai

Weiwei said, when asked about his father’s intellectual legacy:

From being very young it was clear in my mind that this (Chinese) society has
no humanity for people who disagree with it and that it cracks down hard on
them (CNN 2010).

It is precisely this society without humanity that he denounces both in his

political actions and in his art. Ai Weiwei’s life, his thinking and his artistic
actions are an ongoing dialogue with China’s political practices. Art and politics
cannot be separated from one another in his work, because in everything that
surrounds him and makes up his own identity, his own body and organs, he sees a
political dimension. “Art is life and life is art” (Dercon et al. 2009, 9) is Ai’s
maxim. The two are inextricably interlinked, clearly present in every aspect of
their interaction and, because of this, perhaps invulnerable. Ai Weiwei takes high
personal risks and, despite interference by the political authorities and
administration, he remains true to the incorruptible, truth-seeking driving force
behind his art and social activism.

Thus, his campaign in Sichuan directly after the serious earthquake in 2008
was aimed at telling the truth to the people whom it had affected. A
disproportionate number of children died in the school buildings that collapsed one
after another because building and safety regulations had been violated. When Ai
Weiwei asked the planning and licensing authorities some unpleasant and critical
questions, he received no reply. He then began to make his own investigations,
with the help of hundreds of volunteers. They gathered facts, figures, and
evidence, traced the names of over 5000 children who had lost their lives in the so-
called ‘tofu schools’ and established their age, date of birth, the exact place where
they had died and the construction errors that had caused their school to collapse.
When at the beginning of August 2009, shortly before the opening of his
exhibition in Munich and after his efforts to investigate the Sichuan earthquake, Ai
Weiwei was to testify in court in defence of his fellow-campaigner, author and
activist Tan Zuoren 谭作人 (born 1954), the police raided his hotel room and held
him and his volunteers for eleven hours – until the trial was over (Ai 2009, 8). A
photograph that was taken during this incident and immediately published on the
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

internet was circulated very quickly and became an iconic symbol of political
repression and human rights violations in present-day China. When his hotel room
was stormed, Ai Weiwei received a severe blow to the head, which later resulted
in a life-threatening brain haemorrhage. He posted the following commentary on
his blog:

They beat me so hard that I may easily have suffered lasting damage…I can
afford the treatment, but thousands of my fellow Chinese who are abused by
the police every year cannot (Bork 2009).

Ai Weiwei used the internet to talk about the consequences of this abuse, his
subsequent admission to hospital in Munich, and the brain surgery that followed.
He posted photographs of his CT scan, his catheter, his hospital bed and his room
on various web sites as a kind of logbook. With these postings, he was taking a
clear stand against the suppression of free speech and directly denouncing the
brutal assault by the security forces for which there had been no legal basis.

But thanks to this altercation the ‘Sichuan Earthquake Victims’ project

became more and more of a political issue. The subject was featured prominently
on the façade of Haus der Kunst during the retrospective of Ai’s works in
2009/2010: The artist installed 9000 red, green, blue and yellow children’s
backpacks along the length of the 100 metre long façade of the building, arranging
them in a kind of mosaic to form the Chinese characters:
“她在这个世界上幸福生活了七年”. These are the words of a mother who
neither asked for nor wanted financial compensation for the loss of her daughter in
one of the schools that collapsed in the earthquake. She simply wanted her to be
remembered, because “she lived happily for seven years in this world”.3

3 “For a harmonious society, eat river crabs!”

“Down with the Confucian shop!” was the enraged battle-cry of the Beijing
students who staged protests on May, 4, 1919 and who saw Confucius as the root
of the malaise in the Chinese state. “From whatever angle you look at it,
Confucius is disgusting!” says Ai Weiwei 90 years later in his Tweeter (Custer
2010) and claims that Confucius is the root of the malaise in the Chinese state
today. But his anger is directed primarily at the Confucian-influenced notion of

3
Remembering, 2009.
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

harmony (he 和), and thus at associated catchwords such as “harmonious society”
(hexie shehui 和谐社会), the slogan that has officially represented China’s
political course since October 2004, since the 4th plenum of the Central Committee
elected by the 16th Party Conference (Wacker et al. 2008. 7). The Chinese
leadership also propagates the concept of harmony, of peaceful co-existence, on
the level of international politics: For example, when Chinese President Hu Jintao
addressed the UN General Assembly in September 2005, he spoke of a
‘harmonious world’ (hexie shijie 和谐世界), without further comment (Wacker et
al. 2008, 9f.). Harmony in politics and society, in the microcosmos and the
macrocosmos, has become a fixed term in the official political ideology. In Zhang
Yimou’s dazzling opening ceremony at the Olympic Games in 2008 ‘harmony’
(he 和) was the leitmotif of the ostentatious choreography. The China’s attitude
towards religions, too, is changing in line with the political re-orientation: They
are no longer viewed as the ‘opium of the people’ but rather as a positive force
that can contribute to building a ‘harmonious society’ (Wacker et al. 2008, 10). It
is also clear, however, that for the regime to achieve this ‘harmonious society’, in
spite of resistance from divergent and disruptive elements, it has to deploy such
instruments of power which are diametrically opposed to the term ‘harmony’:
censorship, surveillance, arrest, and arbitrary prison sentences.

Since the new slogan was introduced, Communist propaganda has plastered
the country with so much ‘harmony’ that the political exploitation of the term is all
too obvious and the political objective has been defeated. “I’ve been
‘harmonized’” write China’s internet activists and bloggers, when yet again one of
their commentaries on the web has been censored or one of their websites shut
down. But as a rule they use the character for river crab (hexie 河蟹), because the
word ‘harmony’ itself is increasingly falling victim to censorship. Thus, the word
‘harmony’ has evolved into ‘river crab’ and has become synonymous with
censorship (Bork 2010).

Taking up this wordplay with bitter irony and artistic creativity, Ai Weiwei
organized a party to mark the forced demolition of his newly built studio in
Shanghai, where guests would be served river crabs. The artist’s reaction to his
own powerlessness in a situation where no reasons were given for the demolition
of his studio, a situation that was a blatant example of political repression, reveals
a subversive sense of humour and a kind of creativity which must strike
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

officialdom as suspicious and objectionable. The action gave further momentum to

the open criticism of the Chinese authorities: By eating river crabs, his guests
would be symbolically devouring the abused notion of ‘harmony’, which itself
was threatening to devour them through the authoritarian control and censorship
they encountered every day. The party went ahead without the artist, because Ai
was put under house in Beijing for seven days. Despite this, some 800 guests came
to Shanghai from all over China and protested with the traditional, but this time
symbolic, river crab feast against censorship and repression. Many of them held
the crabs up in the air like trophies and shouted: “For a harmonious society, eat
river crabs!” (Freyeisen 2010).

4 Tradition is Dead – Long Live Tradition!

Like so much of Ai Weiwei’s work, this action is somewhere between a concrete
political statement and artistic expression. His art is inconceivable without China’s
specific history and culture. He deconstructs tradition, and in this critical process
he discovers a deep-rooted bond with tradition, both in his work and within
himself. Essentially, Ai Weiwei deconstructs tradition, estranges or defamiliarizes
it, re-interprets it and, finally, reassembles it. Traditional motives can be found in
almost every artefact that the artist makes or defamiliarizes. But, according to Ai
Weiwei, it is only by breaking with the past and creatively defamiliarizing it in the
present that a liberated future can be created, a future that is free of historical
baggage. The main source of all creativity can only be found by taking this
approach:

Creativity is the ability to reject the past, to change the status quo and to look
for new potential (Ai et al. 2009, 9).

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn4, a series of photographs that documents the art
performance of the same name, is probably the best known example of Ai’s
decontextualizing traditional objects and was made in his iconoclastic phase in the
mid-1990s. The dropping of an ancient pot is the close-up documentation of an act
of destruction, which happens within fractions of a second. It is a perfect
illustration of the three Newtonian laws of motion: Ai Weiwei holds the urn
(inertia), the urn is in free fall (principle of action), and the urn smashes at his feet
(principle of reaction); it is also a demonstration of the law of gravity, the earth’s
4
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995.
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

gravitational pull, and creative destruction which makes room for new creativity.
At the same time, the Han Dynasty urn embodies a cultural tradition which has
outlived its usefulness. The black and white triptych transforms this two thousand
year-old artefact into a different artwork, gives it a new permanence and a new
critical relevance. The value of the original is replaced by the ‘valuelessness’ of
the fake (Liveauctioneers).

Ai Weiwei has applied bright paint to vases that date back to predynastic
China and transformed them into Pop Art objects5; and he has decorated a Han
Dynasty Urn6 with the Coca Cola logo. These are similar iconoclastic actions,
where the artist reinvents traditional objects and makes their re-contextualization
possible. He refers to these works as fake-fate (Hill 2008). The vases, though now
‘wrapped’ in a modern design, continue to exist in the showcases of museums and
galleries. But where the Coca Cola logo melds with the Neolithic, and where
bright acrylic colours lend the faded surface of an antique vase an irritatingly
commercial banality, time ceases to exist: It is no longer visible either in tradition
or in modernity, either in the original or in the fake – it has ceased to exist.

The re-assembly of Qing dynasty furniture into surreal, unfamiliar looking

objects that have been divested of their function represents a break with the
traditional notions of authority and authenticity in ancient China. Like his artistic
forbear Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who coined the terms ready-made and
objet trouvé at the beginning of the 20th century and who was regarded as the
initiator of conceptual art, Ai Weiwei assembles everyday objects like doors7 and
furniture8, coat hangers9 or bicycles10 in unexpected ways. This conceptual
interaction – through the intention of the artist and through the new site – gives the
ready-mades an entirely new meaning, which has nothing in common with the
original object.

5
Colored Vases, 2005, 2006, 2008.
6
Han Dynasty Urn with Coca Cola logo, 1994.
7
Template, 2007.
8
Table with two Legs, 2005; Stools, 1997; Grapes, 2008.
9
Profile Duchamp, 1985.
10
Forever Bicycles, 2006.
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

Ai’s art bears strong traces not only of Marcel Duchamp, but also of object
artists like Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and graphic artists and painters like
Jasper Johns (born 1930), the prominent exponents of Pop Art. Even the ‘extended
art concept’ and ‘social sculpture’ of Josef Beuys (1921-1986) appears to be
mirrored in Ai Weiwei’s actions and artworks. What distinguishes his work is that
he is constantly moving between the cultures of East and West. Traditional
Chinese art culture meets free, unrestrained Western art forms. A case in point is
Ai’s design for the Beijing National Stadium, built for the Summer Olympic
Games in 2008 in cooperation with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron
(World News; Building Bejing Stadium 2008): It is reminiscent of an antique
Chinese clay water bowl made or a porcelain rice bowl.

Ai Weiwei’s close bond with his homeland is also clearly apparent in his
‘social sculptures’ such as Fairytale, an action for which 1,001 Chinese were
invited in 2007 to the documenta XII arts festival in Kassel, Germany. Kassel, the
town in which the Brothers Grimm lived and worked from 1798 to 1839 and
which is the setting for a number of their fairytales, is today clearly marked by the
physiognomy of the modern age. Selected from all sectors of the population and
including farmers, teachers, students, artists, housewives and engineers, the
Fairytale participants formed a very heterogeneous group indeed. What they all
had in common and what distinguished them from their surroundings and made
them recognizable was their homeland, the People’s Republic of China. For many
of them the opportunity to travel to Europe was a dream come true, an unexpected
twist of fate that only occurs in fairytales by the Brothers Grimm or in the Tales of
1001 Nights. Their clothes, lunch bags, luggage and accessories were all designed
by Ai Weiwei and his team: They were made into ‘social sculptures’, recognizable
as part of the exhibition. Commenting on his idea, Ai Weiwei said:

To bring 1,001 Chinese to Kassel is to create the wherewithal such that each
participant has the chance to confront him or herself with their own ordinary
lives and at the same time to attend one of the major festivals of contemporary
art. It’s all about the personal experience, awareness, and consciousness as
well as the direct confrontation and enlightenment they experience through
the whole process. I believe this is the most important and meaningful
experience that can be derived from cultural exchange (Seefranz 2007).

In his Fairytale action Ai Weiwei showed how the town of Kassel could be
seen through the eyes of the Chinese, who are conditioned by quite a different
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

understanding of and relationship toward the traditional and the modern. And vice
versa, the action altered the appearance of the town, making it possible for the
people of Kassel to see their own town differently. In the hundred days of
documenta XII 2007 this act of integrating two different lifestyles, east and west,
‘cast a spell’ on day-to-day life in Kassel in the manner of a fairytale; it left a
lasting impression on the consciousness of everyone involved and created
encounters which opened the way for something new, something that had never
before been experienced.

Ai Weiwei is one of the rare mediators between Western forms of expression

and Asian appreciation of traditional craftsmanship. His objects – made of
porcelain, carpet, tea, paper and wood – are of the highest quality and are a
testimony to the skills and painstaking work of many craftspeople. This perfection
in craftsmanship is a further acknowledgement by the artist of his own tradition
and his own roots. Thus, several years of intricate work preceded the Sunflower
seed exhibition in London, with some 1,600 craftspeople in Jingedezhen 景德鎮,
the centre of porcelain making, involved in the production of porcelain sunflower
seeds. With this laboriously crafted installation, in which each of the hundred
million seeds were fired at a temperature of 1300 degrees centigrade, painted by
hand on both sides and fired again at 800 degrees, according to the ancient
porcelain-making process, Ai Weiwei was seeking ways of transposing a
traditional technique into the language of present-day art. The production process
was entirely traditional, which means that from the making of the clay to the
finished sunflower seed there were between twenty and thirty stages. Groups of
artisans in small workshops worked together closely and played their different
parts in the various production stages. Work could also be taken home and done
alongside the worker’s household chores (Sunflower seeds 2010). As with so
many of Ai Weiwei’s works, the message of the installation is multi-layered. It
varies from the question of the relationship of the individual to the collective and
criticism of mass production to allusions to the need to share in times of
deprivation and hunger. A sunflower with it myriads of seeds also stands for the
Chinese people, who turned towards the true light of the sun, Chairman Mao
(Thomas 2010). Each seed, each person, is unique, distinctive in the potentiality of
his or her individual expression and in this respect must be appreciated. But only
together do Ai Weiwei’s hundred million sunflower seeds cause a gigantic sea of
porcelain to sound like the ocean and allow visitors to the Tate to become
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

immersed in a new realm of experience, which may have nothing to do with China
but may recall memories of one’s earlier life or a long forgotten walk on a pebble
beach.

A further example of an intricately hand-crafted object is Soft Ground, a

380m2 woollen carpet woven specially for the exhibition in Haus der Kunst11. It is
a precise copy of the floor in hall 2 of the Munich museum, an accurate
reproduction of the 969 rectangular tiles that make up this floor. Each tile segment
was photographed and its position accurately recorded. It then took ninety days for
the carpet to be traditionally woven in a state-owned weaving mill in Hebei 河北
province. During the production process the colours and lines of each segment
were fashioned accurately and woven in wool died in a combination of threads
made of six strands. (Dercon et al. 2009, 53). With his carpet project, Ai Weiwei
was responding to the genius loci and engaging in a dialogue with the ideology-
steeped history of Haus der Kunst. This exhibition building, which was
commissioned by Adolf Hitler, is built of German lime stone rather than Italian
marble, and because this material is less resistant to abrasion, it bears the clear
traces of the past seventy years, rather like a topography of time. On the obvious
level, the woollen carpet covers the old worn stone floor. In fact, however, the
ambiguity of the imitation emphasizes rather than conceals historical reality. The
carpet also creates a thick buffer that muffles the sounds of the immediate present
but at the same time permits the visitor to become immersed in the time dimension
of an inglorious past.

Ai Weiwei’s soft, thick carpet also symbolizes China’s relationship to its own
history, when in the imperial era outstanding craftsmanship and artistic expression
flourished. Ai is addressing the relationship between the level of artistic and
technical production and the level of political consciousness. In other words: To
what degree can art develop freely under an authoritarian regime? For Ai Weiwei,
freedom of artistic expression, both in form and content, is only possible if
traditional craft techniques and freedom of artistic expression are preserved.
Though Soft Ground provides no final answer to this question, the subtle dialogue
between materials and functions is thought-provoking indeed.

11
Soft Ground, 2009.
Tania Becker: So sorry ‒ Never sorry

Though influenced in his artistic expression by Western forebears and styles,

Ai Weiwei has chosen to use only traditional Chinese materials here. In this way,
the significance of tradition only becomes apparent through its elimination, a
double negative so to speak: The de-contextualization of tradition transforms it
into a new artwork.

5 In Praise of the Net and Freedom

Alongside these more or less conventional art objects are digital pictures and
messages such as emails, blogs and particularly commentaries posted on Twitter or
the Chinese equivalent, the microblog site Weibo 微博, all of which are
indispensable components of Ai Weiwei’s direct engagement and political
activism. His website is closely monitored, censored, and regularly shut down by
the Chinese authorities. Implied criticism of the regime, wordplay or comments
that upset the authorities simply disappear, albeit for a short time only. The site is
quickly reinstated under a different web address; this cat and mouse game is
ongoing. Although the authorities are now on the same technical level as internet
users and are spending huge sums of money on controlling and censoring the net,
there are still many ways of circulating uncensored information and expressing
opinions. Critical and candid web users are Ai’s main audience, his harshest critics
and his staunch supporters. Commenting on the significance of the internet in
China, he says:

I think we were different people before the arrival of internet technology. We

humans can now be influenced in a different way. We can also exercise our
rights on very different channels or exercise power in different ways. This
versatility means redefining both the individual and society (Friedrich-Freksa,
2010).

Through the massive spread of digital media the interaction between the individual
and the collective is in the process of being redefined in China, too, and this is
inevitably creating a new consciousness in the digital public sphere: The
fundamental right of every individual to be allowed to question things without fear
of reprisals is being expressed. And here lies the key to individual and collective
freedom.
 Asian and African Studies XIV, 2 (2010), pp.nn-nn

Ai Weiwei’s artistic and public actions are clear reactions to and critical comments
on the political and social reality in his homeland. In his work he does not belong
to the Western avant-garde. His use of craft traditions and techniques that have
been handed down in China through the ages reveals the artist’s desire for direct
expression rather than ‘intellectual sublimation’. In the special tension between Ai
Weiwei’s deep roots in his own cultural tradition on the one hand and his clear
position vis-à-vis China’s political reality on the other, his artworks are trailblazers
of a new, deeply political, re-orientated, free-thinking and creative Chinese
contemporary art. They convey a true impression of the elemental importance to
him of political and artistic freedom, because his art and his life are based on a
radical desire for self-determination. To conclude my essay, I would like to quote
Ai’s own words in praise of freedom:

My life is characterized by having no plan, no direction, and no goals… I can

throw myself into the things that I like, and because there are no obstacles, I
can never be trapped (Ai et al. 2009, 21).

6 References:
Ai Weiwei. 2009. Barely Something. Duisburg: GDKM.
Ai Weiwei & Mark Siemons (eds.). 2009. Ai Weiwei – so sorry. München: Prestel.
ArtSchoolVets!. 2011. 'Ai Weiweis Atelier in Shanghai abgerissen.'
http://www.artschoolvets.com/news/2011/01/12/ai-weiweis-atelier-in-shanghai-
abgerissen. (12 January, 2011.)
'Building Beijing Stadium.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FynuR_g-
ewo&feature=fvwrel. (7 May, 2008.)
BBC News. 'China Nobel row: Artist Ai Weiwei stopped from leaving.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11909470. (3 December, 2010.)
Bork, Henrik. 2009. 'Ai Weiwei erhebt schwere Vorwürfe gegen Peking.'
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erhebt-schwere-vorwuerfe-gegen-peking-1.31578. (15 September, 2009.)
Bork, Henrik. 2010. 'Subversive Flusskrebse.' In: Süddeutsche Zeitung 257. 6/7 November
2010. Pp. 13.
CNN. 'Ai Weiwei interviewed on CNN's Amanpour Part 1.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAeLmN_UjA. (21 March, 2010.)
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