The Unrelenting Ai Weiwei: Show Evokes Danger and Urgency of Art

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/ai-weiwei-exhibition-underscores-dangers-and-importance-of-art-a-961990.html



A major exhibition opens in Berlin this week of the work of Ai Weiwei, China's most famous artist. Events like this are the very thing that protect him against further repression at home. The show is packed with moving works that are critical of the regime.

The Unrelenting Ai Weiwei: Show Evokes Danger and Urgency of Art
By Ulrike Knöfel
April 02, 2014 – 06:03 PM

Mr. Chang has worked for Ai Weiwei for the past 20 years. He's in charge of implementing the designs created by the artist. For the jail cell, for example, they needed two months, after which a music video was filmed, ending with a bald-headed Ai looking into the camera wearing red lipstick. Later they dismantled the cuboidal blocks, numbered the pieces and shipped them across the ocean in containers. Now Mr. Cheng is standing inside Berlin's Martin Gropius Bau, a large old building that is used for major art exhibitions.

Within a few days, he and a few colleagues managed to reassemble the modules. The external walls aren't of importance -- it's the interior that's crucial. It is a copy of the room in which Ai Weiwei was locked up for almost 12 weeks in 2011. It wasn't a normal jail cell.

Ai still doesn't know today exactly where he was detained, only that it was likely on property used by the military. He had the room rebuilt from his memory. The outside of the door is labelled with the numbers "1135," making it resemble a hotel room. The room itself is quite large, at 26 square meters (269 square feet), the flooring is imitation parquet and there are two damask-patterned curtains. The window, however, is high, small and barred. The walls are also covered in foam plastic which is covered with foil. It's a provisionary padded cell. A few openings in the coating enable a glimpse of the actual wall covering, flower-patterned wallpaper. There's a small bathroom in the corner. Ai had to wash his clothes himself.

After three or four minutes, the cell feels stifling. Ai was allowed to return home after weeks, but others in China disappear forever, somewhere.

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From the link above you can look at 19 pics from Mr. Weiwei.