VIEWING ROOM

Ai Weiwei:

The Art of Resistance

This summer, Haines Gallery presents a selection of important works by
the internationally renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

Through these signature pieces, Ai Weiwei uses beauty, humor, and Chinese material culture to address the abuses of power and forgotten histories that shape our present.

Made over the last decade, these works continue to take on new relevance today.

Sales Inquiries: David Spalding, Executive Director
david@hainesgallery.com

Press Inquiries: Irene Fung, Gallery Manager
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In 2011, Ai Weiwei was imprisoned by the Chinese authorities in a secret location for 81-days—retribution for his public outcries against injustice. Following his release, the artist created these handcuffs, exactingly carved from a wood prized for its strength. As the empty cuffs suggest, the forces of power can be binding, but are not inescapable.

Finally freed but stripped of his passport, Ai Weiwei found himself under constant surveillance. The Marble Lantern is a testament to the artist’s mocking response to the video cameras that surrounded his Beijing studio, which he defiantly festooned with paper lanterns. Traditionally associated with festivals, this exquisitely carved form appears to blow in the wind despite its marble girth, as if free from the oppression of gravity.

In response to the Chinese government’s confiscation of his passport, Ai Weiwei also began the everyday practice of placing a bouquet in a bicycle basket outside his Beijing studio, using vivid floral profusions to counter stale, bureaucratic power. This delicate, remarkably precise sculpture, created in the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen, commemorates the artist’s daily act of resistance.

Flowers have multiple associations in Ai Weiwei’s lexicon. Just before the artist’s birth, China launched its Hundred Flowers Campaign, temporarily encouraging a "flowering" of free speech in order to flush out and punish dissent. The artist’s father, the celebrated poet Ai Qing, published "The Gardner’s Dream," an allegorical tale of freedom. As a result, the family sent into exile, toiling in labor camps for more than two decades.

With its brilliant green surface, Watermelon calls back to the Ai family's exile to the Gobi Desert, where the young artist saw melons growing in the otherwise barren hinterlands—a sweet diversion from life’s hardships.

"Cao" means "grass" in Mandarin, but with a shift in the intonation, it can also be an expletive. Such homonyms are a popular workaround for users of the heavily censored Chinese intranet who seek freedom of speech—and a recurring theme in the work of Ai Weiwei, a champion of human rights.

About the Artist