Ai Weiwei

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei--one of the world's most famous artists and activists--tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as "the most important artist working today" by the Financial Times and as "an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom" by The New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. Once an intimate of Mao Zedong, Ai Weiwei's father was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist--and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his own life story and that of his father, whose own creativity was stifled. At once ambitious and intimate, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

A Memoir

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Wulf Herzogenrath

Thomas Eller

Uta Rahman-Steinert

Accompanying a major new exhibition of Ai Weiwei's work, including many pieces made especially for the show, this book features numerous illustrations, texts by the artist as well as informed essays by leading scholars. This book offers reproductions of the approximately 50 works in the exhibition, some of which were specially created for Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau museum, and some even more specifically for the building's enormous glass-topped atrium. From large installations to smaller dioramas, these works present Ai's most recent artistic expressions of resistance, courage, and historical truth.

Evidence

Maurizio Bortolotti

Greg Hilty

Alessandro Possati

Jennifer Ng

Published to mark the Disposition exhibition showing in Venice and at the Lisson Gallery, London, this book comprises landmark works showing Ai Weiwei at the dizzying height of his artistic and polemic powers. It also presents a survey of the artists life and career paths between 2008 and 2013.

Disposition

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines of the migrant crisis, how to make art, and technology as a tool for freedom or oppression. Ai opens up about his relationship to his father as a poet and as a dissident forced into hard labor in a small village after the Cultural Revolution. He conjures up scenes from his long relationship with New York: dropping out of Parsons because he couldn't afford tuition, making portraits in Washington Square Park as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s, taking photos for the New York Times at demonstrations in Tompkins Square Park, and returning to set up the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors project across the city. These candid, spontaneous conversations reveal why Ai Weiwei has become such a major force in contemporary art and political life.

Conversations

An Xiao Mina

Anthony Pins

"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. Published in association with the artist, this book 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 also includes excepts 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." - Dust jacket.

Art Architecture and Activism

Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters

Manifestos and immodest proposals from China's most famous artist and activist, culled from his popular blog, shut down by Chinese authorities in 2009. In 2006, even though he could barely type, China's most famous artist started blogging. For more than three years, Ai Weiwei turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings. He wrote about the Sichuan earthquake (and posted a list of the schoolchildren who died because of the government's “tofu-dregs engineering”), reminisced about Andy Warhol and the East Village art scene, described the irony of being investigated for “fraud” by the Ministry of Public Security, made a modest proposal for tax collection. Then, on June 1, 2009, Chinese authorities shut down the blog. This book offers a collection of Ai's notorious online writings translated into English—the most complete, public documentation of the original Chinese blog available in any language. The New York Times called Ai “a figure of Warholian celebrity.” He is a leading figure on the international art scene, a regular in museums and biennials, but in China he is a manifold and controversial presence: artist, architect, curator, social critic, justice-seeker. He was a consultant on the design of the famous “Bird's Nest” stadium but called for an Olympic boycott; he received a Chinese Contemporary Art “lifetime achievement award” in 2008 but was beaten by the police in connection with his “citizen investigation” of earthquake casualties in 2009. Ai Weiwei's Blog documents Ai's passion, his genius, his hubris, his righteous anger, and his vision for China.

Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009

Ai Weiwei's Blog

Einer der größten Künstler unserer Zeit erzählt sein Leben vor dem Hintergrund der Geschichte Chinas Ai Weiwei gehört zu den bekanntesten Künstlern unserer Zeit. In »1000 Jahre Freud und Leid« schildert er erstmals seinen außerordentlichen künstlerischen Werdegang vor dem Hintergrund der Geschichte seiner Familie in China. Schon als Junge erlebte er die Verbannung und Demütigung seines Vaters Ai Qing, einst ein Vertrauter Maos und Chinas einflussreichster Dichter, der im Zuge der Kulturrevolution als »Rechtsabweichler« gebrandmarkt wurde. Diese Erfahrungen prägten Ai Weiweis Schaffen und seine politischen Überzeugungen. Er beschreibt die schwierige Entscheidung, seine Familie zu verlassen, um für ein Kunststudium in die USA zu gehen, wo er sich u. a. mit Allen Ginsberg anfreundete und künstlerische Inspiration fand. Offen erzählt er von seinem Aufstieg zu einem Star der internationalen Kunstwelt, der aufgrund seiner Menschenrechtsaktivitäten jedoch immer stärker ins Visier des chinesischen Regimes geriet, das ihn schließlich 2011 mehrere Monate inhaftierte. Die sehr persönlichen und vom Künstler selbst reich illustrierten Erinnerungen geben nicht nur einen fesselnden Einblick in Ai Weiweis Leben und Arbeiten, sie sind zugleich Mahnung, die Meinungsfreiheit immer wieder neu zu verteidigen. Zeitgleich erscheint eine deutsche Ausgabe von Gedichten seines Vaters Ai Qing, »Schnee fällt auf Chinas Erde«, ISBN 978-3-328-60242-2.

Erinnerungen

1000 Jahre Freud und Leid

Hans Ulrich Obrist

A new edition of conversations between the artist Ai Wei Wei and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, coming up to the present day Ai Weiwei - artist, architect, curator, publisher, poet and urbanist - extended the notion of art and is one of the world's most significant creative and cultural figures. In this series of interviews, conducted over several years with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, he discusses the many dimensions of his artistic life, ranging over subjects including ceramics, blogging, nature, philosophy and the myriad influences that have fed into his work. He also talks candidly about his father, his childhood spent in exile and his criticism of the Chinese state. Together, these extraordinary discussions are an essential reminder of the need for personal, political and artistic freedom.

with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Ai Weiwei Speaks

In 1000 jaar vreugde en verdriet schetst Ai Weiwei een verbazingwekkend portret van het China van de afgelopen honderd jaar. Hij gaat op zoek naar de oorsprong van zijn creativiteit en zijn vurige politieke overtuigingen en doet indringend verslag van het leven van zijn vader, Ai Qing, een van China's invloedrijkste dichters, die ooit een vertrouweling was van Mao Zedong. Ai Qing werd in 1957 gebrandmerkt als rechts element en veroordeeld tot dwangarbeid. Tijdens de Culturele Revolutie werd hij met zijn gezin, inclusief zijn zoon Ai Weiwei, verbannen naar een verafgelegen, troosteloze uithoek van China die bekendstond als Klein Siberië. In zijn memoires beschrijft Ai Weiwei zijn kindertijd in ballingschap en zijn moeilijke beslissing zijn familie te verlaten om een kunstopleiding te gaan volgen in Amerika, waar hij bevriend raakte met Allen Ginsberg en zich liet inspireren door Marcel Duchamp en Andy Warhol. Openhartig en met gevoel voor humor vertelt hij hoe hij vervolgens teruggaat naar China en uitgroeit tot een kunstenaar en internationale mensenrechtenactivist van wereldfaam, en hoe bepalend het leven in een totalitaire staat is geweest voor zijn werk. 1000 jaar vreugde en verdriet is groots en intiem en herinnert ons eraan hoe belangrijk het is de vrijheid van meningsuiting te blijven beschermen, juist nu.

1000 jaar vreugde en verdriet

Chen Weiqing

This book covers a recent sculptural installation by the Chinese artist, architect and radical intellectual, Ai Weiwei. 'Fragments' depicts a mysterious large-scale sculpture that hybridizes architectural elements from several Chinese temples.

Ai Weiwei: Fragments Beijing 2006

Sculptures in the field of tension between industrial productionand nature. Ai Weiwei (b. Beijing, 1957; lives and works in Cambridge andBerlin) is one of the best-known conceptual artists in the world today. His installations and sculptures turn the spotlight on global ills. The sprawling iron sculptures in his new series, titled Roots, are casts of the root systems of the Pequi tree, a critically endangered species native to Brazil. The artist discovered these giant trees, which are over a century old, during a trip through the rainforest of Bahía and first assembled them in sculptural compositions for theexhibition Raiz at the OCA Pavilion in São Paulo (2018). After theshow closed, molds were made of the wooden sculptures that served to produce these cast-iron replicas. The result is animposing ensemble that raises urgent questions concerning theconsequences of industrialization and globalization. Alarmed by therapid destruction of tropical forests, Ai Weiwei has created a bodyof work that squarely confronts the repercussions of climatechange. The book documents the genesis of the colossal rootsculptures. Essays by Bob Bloomfield, Marcello Dantas, Robert Macfarlane, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Peter-Klaus Schuster, GüntherVogt, and Christina Yu Yu explore the works from a wide variety of angles, drawing on anthropology and sociology, Chinese and European history, botany and ecology.

Roots

Rosa Pera

Installationer, skulpturer og fotografier, ofte med politisk sigte, af den kinesiske kunstner Ai Weiwei (f. 1957)

Edition anglais-espagnol-catalan

On the Table - Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is recognized around the globe for his conceptual installations catalyzing dialogue between the contemporary world and traditional Chinese modes of thought and production. Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle accompanies Ai's multifaceted installation at the Marciano Art Foundation, the culmination of 10 years of effort, featuring works related to his interests in mass production, antiquity and mythology. Enduring issues of political and social justice are given renewed potency through Ai's thoughtful and powerful installations. These include Life Cycle, a sculptural response to the global refugee crisis, and a series of figures based on mythic creatures from the Shanhaijing, or Classic of Mountains and Seas, crafted from bamboo and silk.

Life Cycle

In principio c'era Confucio. Poi vennero i pensieri del presidente Mao. E ora gli «improvvisi» di Ai Weiwei.

Weiweismi

A powerful portrait of the greatest humanitarian emergency of our time, from the director of Human Flow In the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees and aid workers in twenty-three countries around the world. A handful of those interviews were included in the film. This book presents one hundred of these conversations in their entirety, providing compelling first-person stories of the lives of refugees. Speaking in their own words, refugees give voice to their experiences of migrating across borders, living in refugee camps for months or years, and struggling to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings. They talk about the dire circumstances that drove them to migrate, whether war, famine, or persecution; the hardships they face; and their hopes and fears for the future. In the words of Atiq, an Afghan in his early twenties staying at a refugee camp in Greece, "Nobody in the world wants to leave his country. But there's no way for people to live in that place." Complete with photographs taken by Ai Weiwei while filming Human Flow, this book provides a powerful and moving account of the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time.

Ai Weiwei

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