Ai Weiwei and the business of activism
Art, activism and exploitation
Ai Weiwei’s artistic endeavours render him one of the world’s most famous living artists. An activist, a provocateur, and a beneficiary of the art market to an extent few living artists can claim.
Ai’s art bears witness to the often perverse machinations of the Chinese state, and at times, goes so far as to reject Chinese culture entirely [1]. After making his name as a Chinese dissident artist, Ai began to look beyond the borders of his home country to comment on socio-political and economic affairs occurring internationally. Ai challenges the actions of global political powers, often with blatant reference to issues being spotlighted on the global political stage within a given moment.
Ai is therefore recognised as an activist as much as an artist.
It would be naive to claim that Ai, or any artist of his status, works merely to ‘unveil politico-economic’ conditions on behalf of under-acknowledged global citizens [2]. It therefore should be noted that in criticising the institutions of global politics, notably capitalism, Ai also exploits their systems for his personal benefit.
The attention-grabbing nature of Ai’s artwork is therefore multifaceted; it challenges the exploits of the Chinese government with what Ai describes as ‘honest art,’ [3]. It bears witness to and questions the machinations of global political powers, and it serves his financial interests.
In 2013, the Chinese authorities confiscated Ai’s passport and therefore restricted his right to move freely [4]. The authorities then proceeded to surveil Ai’s studio in Caochangdi, Beijing.
The artist responded with a declaration, ‘from the 30th of November 2013, I will place a bouquet of fresh flowers in the basket of a bicycle outside №258 Caochangdi studio every morning until I regain the right to travel freely’ [5].
And so, every morning from the 30th of November 2013 to the 22nd of July 2015, Ai placed a bouquet of fresh flowers in the basket of a bicycle placed in view of the surveillance cameras trained on his studio [6]. He recorded the flowers with photographs which he then posted to his website, titling the blog page With Flowers; an act of dissent against the Chinese government, a peaceful protest against the violation of his freedom.
Ai was an early proponent of the use of social media to spread art and activism, a practice that is now central to the work of most contemporary artists and activists. With Flowers was a vehicle through which Ai demonstrated his resistance to the oppressive hand of the Chinese authorities. Ai was unwilling to take his punishment quietly, and his use of online media meant he could present the unjust practices of the Chinese government to a global audience.
With the declaration mentioned above and around 600 bouquets, Ai caught international interest, leading to global criticism of the Chinese government’s treatment of the artist. Ai thus used his vast social media presence to challenge and expose the arguably perverse workings of the Chinese government.
With what Roberta Smith described as ‘implicit rebelliousness’ Ai has also expressed his dissatisfaction with the Chinese political elite by playing out a dismissal of Chinese cultural history [7]. In a photographic triptych Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Ai is shown nonchalantly smashing a 2000-year-old Chinese relic thought to have been worth roughly 1 million USD. The artist is seen holding, releasing and finally shattering a Han dynasty vase, his expression remains unchanged from photograph to photograph, appearing indifferent to the destruction of a valuable ancient artefact.
With a similar disregard for tradition, Ai repainted multiple Han Dynasty era vases to resemble cheap, contemporary vessels further rejecting the cultural heritage of the objects, while also alluding to Duchampian ideas of artistic authenticity and the readymade [8].
Ai’s efforts as an activist have spread beyond the borders of China. Ai’s art frequently returns to global issues relating to inequality, censorship and refugee rights. One must only turn to Ai’s Instagram and Twitter presence to see the artist’s interests spread well beyond the machinations of the Chinese state, to global political crises, and even to the behaviour of private corporations [9].
Images on Ai’s Instagram from April 2016 show Syrian refugees crossing the Jordanian border. The refugee crisis has been central to Ai’s work. Famously, Ai secured 14,000 life jackets to the façade of Berlin’s Konzerthaus. The installation was widely celebrated for its dual effect of calling attention to the plight of refugees, and providing a memorial for those who drowned trying to escape Syria [10].
Typical to Ai’s style, the work is blatant in its reference to the refugee crisis. The striking contrast between the imposing facade of the Konzerthaus and the relatively small, flimsy lifejackets perfectly illustrated the imbalanced in power between the individual and the state; the privileged and the unprivileged. The installation is an example of one of many of Ai’s works which engage in prominent international human rights movements.
However, to be cynical about it; it is difficult to ascertain whether Ai’s engagement with the refugee crisis was a genuine attempt to appeal to the ‘conscience of reform,’ or if he was addressing the issue due to its already conspicuous position on the global political stage [11].
Controversially, Ai imitated the death of a three-year-old Syrian child, Alan Kurdi, who perished at sea while seeking refuge. In the image, Ai himself mimics a viral photo of the child’s dead body. The original photograph, showing the body of a lifeless child on a Turkish beach, was received with a media frenzy and global outrage.
Ai’s response to the tragedy casts doubt on the idea that he makes art merely to ‘unveil politico-economic’ conditions and encourage his audience to ‘speak or protest on behalf of’ under-privlieged global citizens. The international attention received by the original image led to a worldwide discussion about refugee rights, widespread protests and international outrage. The artist’s imitation of the image did nothing to publicise the issue further, but was instead an inflammatory attention grab, and some have argued, that when the famous artist mimicked the death of a child, he thoughtlessly mocked the plight of refugees.
Critics have suggested that Ai’s engagement with the refugee crisis was therefore due to the international media attention the issue was already receiving at the time. Indeed, dealing mainly with high profile issues in blatant, rather than nuanced terms has meant that Ai has received a great deal of media attention throughout his career. However, to do so, Ai has often exploited those for whom he claims to speak.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Sunflower Seeds, arguably the most renown work produced by the artist. In 2010, 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds, weighing a total of 150 tons covered the floor of Turbine Hall in London’s Tate Modern [12]. According to Ai, the work ‘alludes to globalisation and mass production in China that caters to Western consumerism’ [13]. Ironically, the exact economic structure described by Ai enabled the production of Sunflower Seeds. And in many ways, that is the point.
The exhibition included footage of Chinese labourers and artisans crafting the porcelain sunflower seeds. Ai thus brings the seemingly ‘insignificant element at the bottom of the production chain; thousands of cheap labourers, assembly lines in gigantic factories and tedious procedures’ to a Western audience [14].
The sunflower seeds took approximately 1600 craftspeople two and a half years to make. Reportedly, each craftsperson earned roughly 0.74 USD per hour [15]. In February of 2015, Sotheby’s sold 100 kilograms of the ceramic sunflower seeds for roughly 342,894 USD, giving Sunflower Seeds a price tag of 3,428.94 USD per kilo. Therefore in 2015, the market value of Sunflower Seeds as it was presented at the Tate Modern in 2010 was over 520 million USD.
The work has now been disseminated, some of it is in the hands of light figured museum visitors, but most has been distributed among smaller works now owned by public and private collections, including Tate’s, which holds ten tons of the work. Most of the works seem to have been sold in a private treaty, the total profit accumulated by sales of Sunflower Seeds is therefore unclear. But recent auctions results suggest the market value of the work is somewhere between 3.30 USD and 5.70 USD per seed. Of course, the scale and distribution of the work has rendered it inevitable that fakes popped up on the market. Should you wish, you can buy 50 pieces of Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds, for 26 USD on Etsy, dubious, yes, but well below market price…
The market value of the work and related pieces is clearly significantly more than the Chinese craftspeople who made them will ever see. The installation was therefore very literal in its evocation of the global capitalist economy; to address Western exploitation of Chinese workers, Ai has facilitated the exploitation of Chinese workers. The artist and his investors have thus profited significantly from the labour of exploited works.
ArtFacts has ranked Ai among the world’s 25 most prominent artist for the last five years, about half of whom are dead. Naturally, the artist’s consistent prominence has earned him a great deal of attention, rendering him a significant beneficiary of the art market. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. But, arguably, Sunflower Seeds and the photograph of Ai posing as a drowned Syrian child each exploit the suffering of others for the attention and profit at the artist.
Although this does not change the significance of Ai’s contribution to contemporary art and the Chinese avant-garde, it is perhaps worth questioning his motives. The romantic notion that art is somehow pure and free from capitalist interest is wrong, and I am not here to challenge that; artists, like anyone else, should be paid fairly for what they do.
However, it must be acknowledged that Ai is not ‘unveiling’ the suffering of under-acknowledged global citizens. Instead, he is using art to address issues already being discussed through other mediums. In using art to advance his agenda as an activist, Ai has at times exploited the same people he claims to speak for. The artist is therefore complicit in the power structures he is seen to challenge. What we can establish then, is that like his art, Ai’s motives are multifaceted.
This begs the question, to what extent is Ai a businessman, and to what extent is he an activist? Should activism be purely altruistic? Or is it okay if commercial interests incentivise activism?
Notes:
[1] R. Smith, “A Provocateur’s Medium: Outrage” The New York Times, April 17, 2014.
[2] Simone Hancox, “Art, activism and the geopolitical imagination: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Sunflower Seeds’,” Journal of Media Practise, 12 (2011): 280
[3] Yongwoo Lee and Helena Kontova, “A man with influence” Flash Art (2013): 116
[4] Max Delany, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei. Edited by Max Delany and Eric Shiner, 2016. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.
[5] “With Flowers”, Ai Weiwei, last modified April 22, 2015, http://aiweiwei.com/projects/with-flowers/1/index.html
[6] Giorgio Strafella and Daira Berg, “Twitter Bodhisattva: Ai Weiwei’s Media Politics,” Asian Studies Review, 39 (2015): 139
[7] R. Smith, “A Provocateur’s Medium: Outrage,” 4
[8] Ben Mauk, “The Case of the Million Dollar Broken Vase” The New Yorker, February 27, 2014
[9] J. Wattles, “Chinese Activist Ai Weiwei accuses Lego of censorship” CNN Wire, October 26, 2015. Twitter and Instagram posts from October of 2015 accuse Lego of “censorship and discrimination” after Lego refused to supply Ai a large quaintly of Lego bricks for an artwork due to the “political agenda” of the project.
[10] “Ai Weiwei fixes 14,000 life jackets to Berlin building to highlight refugee Plight” ABC Premium News, February 16, 2016.
[11] James Panero, “The New Political Art” New Criterion, 21 (2012): 54.
[12] “Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds” Last modified 2010, http://www.aiweiweiseeds.com/about-ai-weiweis-sunflower-seeds
[13] “Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds”
[14] “Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds”
[15] Simone Hancox, “Art, activism and the geopolitical imagination” 282.
