Ai Weiwei est un artiste contemporain polyvalent : sculpture, installation, photographie, performance et architecture sont quelquesuns de ses moyens d'expression. Il est également l'un des artistes les plus influents au monde et un réalisateur de documentaires engagé.
Son oeuvre toute entière alerte sur les attaques contre la démocratie et la liberté d'expression, les violations des droits de l'Homme et les déplacements de personnes.
Ce recueil de citations illustre l'éventail et la profondeur des réflexions d'Ai Weiwei sur notre humanité et sur les migrations de masse, questions qui l'occupent depuis des décennies. Les mots d'Ai Weiwei témoignent d'une urgence profonde. Ils témoignent aussi d'un rôle impérieux que peut avoir l'art pour donner une voix aux sans-voix.
Widely considered to be one of the most significant cultural figures of his generation in China and internationally, Ai weiwei successfully occupies multiple roles as a conceptual artist, architect, curator, designer, film-maker, publisher and activist. Using a variety of formal languages with both traditional and innovative methods of production, Ai links the past with the present and explores the geopolitical, economic and cultural realities affecting the world with humour and compassion. This book, published in association with the artist, draws on the full breadth of Ai weiwei s architectural, installation and activist work, including drawings and plans from a huge range of international projects, with particular emphasis on his use of space. The publication will also include excerpts from his blog, in which his insightful commentary on the world around him comes to the fore. Throughout the book, a wide selection of essays by leading critics and art-historians, as well as interviews with the artist, draw out his central concerns. An essential addition to any art lover s bookshelf, this publication will be richly illustrated with over 450 colour reproductions.
This new Ai Weiwei (born 1957) monograph is published on the occasion of his exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, presented by Zuecca Project Space and the Lisson Gallery, and offers a summary of the artist's work between 2008 and 2013. It focuses on two projects, Straight (2008-2012) and S.A.C.R.E.D. (2011-2013). Straight is an installation employing more than 100 tons of steel rods recovered by a team of volunteers from buildings destroyed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. Responding both to the tragedy itself and the government's apathy, Ai Weiwei and his team straightened the bars and created a modular installation with the bars laid flat on the floor. S.A.C.R.E.D. is comprised of six metal containers depicting the often humiliating routines of the artist's 2011 imprisonment on a reduced scale, with models of Ai and his guards. These routines include showering, toilet and interrogation.
