Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957), Forever Bicycles, 2011. Installation view, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2011. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio.
When Sabine Eckmann, director and chief curator of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, began formulating the concept for “Ai Weiwei: Bare Life,” three years ago, the artist’s time in prison and his human rights activism—the heart of his artistic mission—were on her mind. The contemporary dissident artist was imprisoned for 81 days for public criticism of the Chinese government and its handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, during which approximately 5,000 schoolchildren died. “I do not prefer works that are too literal—I am more interested in art that is a little bit difficult,” Eckmann says. “Ai Weiwei’s work is complex. On the one hand, it is political; on the other, it still preserves its space as art.”
Opening September 28, the exhibition comprises pieces never before shown in the U.S., plus new work. Making it even more special: This is the first exhibition after a nearly two-year expansion of the museum and the artist’s first major show in the Midwest. “It will also be my first major exhibition created under an academic framework,” Ai says. “The exhibition is separated into two sections—‘Bare Life’ and ‘Rupture’—and the process of selecting the works and curating the show with Sabine Eckmann has been intense but also precise and meaningful.”
Ai Weiwei, 2012. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
In dialogue with the philosophical work of Giorgio Agamben, which examines the notion of unprotected life throughout history, the “Bare Life” section considers what it means to be a vulnerable person in the world—often exploited, brutalized, harassed, or stateless. It includes Forever Bicycles, a monumental and atmospheric site-specific installation that combines contemporary political art with a beautiful aesthetic quality. The wallpaper titled Odyssey, which stretches from floor to ceiling, borrows from historical artistic convention to tell the story of modern-day refugees.
Corresponding with an essay by Hannah Arendt, “Rupture” deals, Eckmann says, with “the phenomenon of modernity’s break from tradition and how we may reconceive of or newly create the past without a continuum between past and present; instead there is a gap, a rupture.” The installation Through illustrates China’s break from tradition during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The massive work consists of crisscrossing pillars, taken from demolished temples, that intersect Qing dynasty desks. China’s abrupt break with its past is also seen in Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, in which we see the artist dropping and shattering an artifact from China’s past in an act of simultaneous destruction and creation.
Primarily through the lens of Chinese history and culture, the exhibition asks the viewer to contemplate how we think about human rights and our own histories. It’s a timely showing.
