Ai Wei Wei

A few weeks ago, Alan Yentob profiled the Chinese dissident artist, Ai Wei Wei in the "Imagine" series (BBC1). Wei Wei has up until now been mainly known in the West for his part in designing the famous "Bird's Nest" stadium at the Beijing Olympics (together with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron) but he works in many other media, such as ceramics, jewellery and sculpture.

Wei Wei was deeply affected by the cultural revolution. His family was exiled and made to live in poverty until the death of Mao in 1976. Wei Wei then left for his “home”, New York, and remained there for 14 years. He was strongly influenced by the conceptual art of Warhol and Duchamp.

He returned to China after the protests of Tiananmen Square in 1989, and as a political and avant-garde artist in the repressive state of contemporary China he is a target for the authorities. In 2008, for example, he sustained life threatening injuries from police following an art work he made which exposed the true extent of the losses in the Sichuan earthquake.

Wei Wei depends greatly on the internet and on feeds such as blogs and Twitter to keep in touch with the global culture. He regards this as a cultural space in which it is possible to clearly express who you are and to fight for your rights. These are fundamental for any artist, he says - “Only when art has connection to ordinary feelings or commonsense does it become most powerful”

It is interesting to compare him with Damien Hirst (see recent blog "Playing to the galleries"). They live in totally different societies and have completely different backgrounds, but both are hugely successful conceptual artists, working on an often spectacular scale. But Wei wei is a political artist with an avant-garde background and agenda. .“It can't be right that art has to depend on the market. Liberty is what makes art unique”.

Hirst comments elegantly on decay and the presence of death, a great taboo in the consumerist Western society. He is subversive in this sense but operates within the market, as his comments make clear. Art for him seems to be partly a business.

Wei Wei's famous project currently at Tate Modern comprises 100 m porcelain sunflower seeds made in the traditional way from the finest clay. First the white seed-shapes are fired in moulds, then, once painted, they are fired again. They are indistinguishable from the genuine article. The process took two and a half years and involved a team of 1600 people.

Wei Wei wants everyone to interpret the installation individually, but obviously it can be seen as a comment on China's history, both ancient and modern. During the revolutionary period the sunflower was the symbol for Mao's power and its seeds were, ironically, all that many people had to eat. Even the vast total is only one sixteenth of China's population.

To see this programme try copying and pasting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w5lkw/Imagine_Winter_2010_Ai_Weiwei_Without_Fear_or_Favour/