Ai, Rebel: The Art And Activism Of Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei, “Middle Finger” (Edition 1 of 4), 2000, gilt bronze, 14" x 27.5" x 9" (photo courtesy of The Albertina Museum, Lisa Rastl, Reiner Riedler and Ai Weiwei Studio)

It is far from the perfect moment for Canadians to visit the United States. 

Tariffs, trade wars, and Trump’s threat of annexation has galvanized Canadians in a shared protective mindset while our seriously weak dollar, notwithstanding, has made the cost of US tourism prohibitive for many. We are wise to stay alert. 

And yet, here I am with a dispatch from Seattle, a review of Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei, the largest survey of the exiled Chinese dissident’s artwork in North America, on view at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) from March 12 to Sept. 7. 

The political climate among the Americans I met during my visit to the museum was unsettled. Many are unsure, like the rest of the world, what fresh hell may be waiting in the briskly churning news cycle. 

Given that Ai Weiwei’s work has famously involved speaking truth to power, it seems there is no better time to reconsider his oeuvre than in the present context. The show, curated by the SAM’s Chief Curator, Dr. FOONG Ping, is 12 months in the making and nothing short of brave. 

Ai, Rebel opens by immediately flipping off its visitors with three examples of Arm With the Finger in Bronze: sculptures extended in the defiant, née obscene, gesture echo throughout the opening suite. Smaller line renditions of Arms decorate the wallpaper, Finger from 2015, and eight black-and-white photographs from Study of Perspective, made between 1995 and 2011, align spatial connection photographically with iconic political architecture such as the White House and the Eiffel Tower, while comically questioning the validity of such structures.  

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Ai Weiwei, Profile of Marcel Duchamp in a Coat Hanger, 1986, wire clothes hanger, hanger: 15" x 11" (image courtesy of The Albertina Museum, Lisa Rastl, Reiner Riedler and Ai Weiwei Studio)

Five galleries follow that explore Ai’s artistic preoccupation with found objects, materiality, political histories, and transformation. The first two rooms feature the artist’s earlier work from his time in New York City during the eighties where paintings such as Mao (Facing Forward) from 1986 are shown alongside 1985’s Hanging Man, a coat hanger bent in the profile of the famous French Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp, and One Man Shoe from 1987, a readymade sculpture made by sewing the back ends of two mass-produced “Made in China” leather shoes. Such early works demonstrate the influence of both Dadaism and Warholian pop art during this period – works that position Ai as a contemporary artist and prefigure his activist impulse. 

As an art historian, I found it thrilling to notice Duchamp’s influence on Ai, bringing into relief a level of influence I had not yet considered – a testament to FOONG’s curatorial framing. A highlight is 2009’s Dust to Dust, where Ai, borrowing from Duchamp’s 1919 work Air de Paris, creates a grid of 30 glass jars containing the remnants of pulverized Neolithic ceramic pots. It is a transformative structure that destroys the remnants of ancient pots, reforming what’s left into an apothecary shelf stocked full of medicinal brown powders – work that is part of the artist’s long and gloriously destructive practice that explores ruin.

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Ai Weiwei, “Sunflower Seeds,” 2010, porcelain, one ton (photo courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio)

Subsequent thematic chapters of Ai’s career are on view, such as his high-profile work that renders useful objects useless,  exhibiting 2011’s Grapes, a large-scale starburst of wooden stools. His studies of multiplicity and mass production are restaged in a smaller version of the famed artwork Sunflowers Seeds from 2010, where one ton of handmade porcelain sunflower seeds are accumulated artfully on the floor; as well as featuring works that demonstrate his concern with governmental surveillance, global migration, and resistance. It was fascinating and terrifying to hear Ai’s personal story of his 2011 arrest at Beijing International airport, detained for 81 days without charge, and without knowing where he was held. He recreates his padded holding cell as the installation work 81, originally mounted in 2013. 

The show closes with several artworks, large-scale “paintings” of sorts, made of Lego bricks that resemble pointillist brush work. Versions of Munch’s The Scream and Peter Paul Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus are altered both in material form and include contemporary political references. These are shown alongside wall-size Lego renditions of Robert Mueller’s report to the US Justice Department on Russian election interference. I was not aware of this facet of Ai’s practice, and in truth, while impressive in structure, the works in Lego left me spiritually and artistically empty. 

The retrospective survey is exhaustive, and a massively impressive showing by FOONG and the team at SAM, who have been quietly operating just under the radar, stewarding an impressive collection of historical and contemporary art. They have expanded the exhibition to include ancillary showings (opening in late March) of Ai’s sculpture Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Bronze) at Olympic Sculpture Park, and Waterlilies at Seattle Asian Art Museum, a Lego reproduction of Monet’s famous work that enfolds elements of the artist’s father’s tragic life. 

Ai Weiwei is one of the most famous and important artists of our time. His body of work, given the present political conditions across the globe, is a reminder to check our complacency and stay vigilantly aware of the power we cede to our governments. ■

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