
Ai Weiwei
Maybe, Maybe Not
-
June 2 2017 - March 3 2018
Curator: Mira Lapidot
-
,
-
Ai Weiwei
Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai Weiwei is an artist and an activist. His father, Ai Qing, a poet and prominent intellectual, was proclaimed an enemy of the people under Mao Zedong’s regime, and the family was exiled to a labor camp when he was one year old. Only in 1976 were they allowed back in Beijing and his father was fully rehabilitated. Ai Weiwei began his career on the burgeoning art scene of Beijing, taking part in exhibitions and artists’ acts of protest against the government and calling for artistic – and general – freedom. Seizing the first opportunity to leave China, Ai arrived in the United States in 1981, eventually settling in New York where he lived for ten years, drawing inspiration from Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol and consolidating his artistic standing. Returning in 1993 to China to care for his ailing father, Ai became involved with the early Chinese avant-garde, organizing exhibitions and publishing underground books. In 1999 he began his architecture practice by designing and building his studio house in Caochangdi, Beijing. In 2006 he started blogging on the internet, becoming a popular and unfiltered voice on political, aesthetic, and societal concerns. Today, thanks to his formidable talent and ability to create human connections, Ai Weiwei is a hugely influential figure in China and one of the most important artists of our time.
Ai’s works are typically massive in scale and awe-inspiring in the virtuosity they exhibit, often requiring the assistance of dozens and sometimes even hundreds of highly skilled craftsmen and craftswomen. What seems attractive at first glance reveals itself on closer scrutiny to be more complex and less pleasing, alluding to subjects such as labor and working conditions, the eradication of tradition in the name of development, censorship, migration and displacement and Chinese history – recent and distant. He famously rallied his studio and hundreds of volunteers to call for the investigation of the casualties of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in particular children whose schools, poorly built as a result of corruption, had collapsed in the quake.
Focusing on the use of excessive force by the state and the threat against the freedom of expression, Ai aims the arrows of his criticism at injustices – overt or covert – all over the world. In 2011, in retaliation for his activism, Ai was arrested and secretly imprisoned without trial. When he was released 81 days later, severe restrictions were imposed on him and his studio was placed under surveillance.
The works in this exhibition cover decades of creative activity. Some are spectacular, others provocative, others still surprisingly delicate. Yet bubbling beneath their attractive surface is a call to each and every one of us to be informed members of civic society, to maintain a vigilant and critical state of mind, to cast doubt, to take nothing for granted. In this age of tectonic shifts in the geopolitical arena, Ai Weiwei’s questions may be more relevant than ever: Is what we are told true? Is what we see real? Maybe, maybe not….



- Oct 01Oct 02Oct 03Oct 04Oct 05
- Sep 14Sep 18Sep 20Sep 21Sep 27Sep 28Oct 01Oct 02Oct 03Oct 04Oct 05Oct 09Oct 11Oct 12Oct 15Oct 16Oct 18Oct 19Oct 22Oct 23Oct 25Oct 26Oct 29Oct 30
- Oct 03Oct 10Oct 17Oct 24Oct 31
- Sep 28Oct 05Oct 12Oct 19Oct 26
- Sep 14Sep 18Sep 20Sep 21Sep 27Sep 28Oct 09Oct 11Oct 12Oct 15Oct 16Oct 18Oct 19Oct 22Oct 23Oct 25Oct 26Oct 29Oct 30
- Sep 14Sep 18Sep 21Sep 28Oct 09Oct 12Oct 15Oct 16Oct 19Oct 22Oct 23Oct 26Oct 29Oct 30
- Oct 10Oct 17Oct 24Oct 31
- Sep 19Sep 20Sep 26Sep 27Oct 10Oct 11Oct 17Oct 18Oct 24Oct 25Oct 31
- Gallery talks
Gallery Talk | The Rose and the Nightingale: Earthly and Divine Love in Late Persian ArtSep 26Oct 10Nov 01 - Oct 10
- Oct 11Dec 19
- Sep 14Sep 21Sep 28Oct 12Oct 19Oct 26
- Sep 14Sep 21Sep 28Oct 12Oct 19Oct 26
- Sep 14Sep 21Sep 28Oct 12Oct 19Oct 26