Ai Weiwei is an internationally renowned artist known for rigorous, compassionate and complex artworks that address political, ethical and social urgency subjects. His oeuvre encompasses architecture, public art and performance.

Born in 1957 in Beijing, Ai Weiwei lived in exile as a youth in the remote Xinjiang province after his father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, was denounced during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing after Mao Zedong’s death and studied at the Beijing Film Academy. He then lived in the United States from 1981-1993 before returning to China.

His art powerfully relates to Chinese culture’s themes, yet the artistic vocabulary through which these are explored strongly resonates with his time spent in the United States. During this time, Weiwei became deeply influenced by the works of Western art’s Masters such as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. From Duchamp, he inherited a kind of radical daring: a willingness to challenge and demystify the status quo.

His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at venues including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009), Tate Modern, London (2010), Taipei Fine Art Museum (2011), Asia Society, New York (2011) and many more.

Some of his most famous politically motivated works include Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern and Straight, which addressed the 2008 Sichuan earthquake by creating art from collapsed schools. Through his bold contemporary artwork, writings, and activism, Ai Weiwei has become one of China’s most recognisable political activists and contemporary artists.

 

In our co-publishing project with Ai Weiwei, we had a chance to sit down with Ai Weiwei and ask him a couple of questions:


Q: I have been told you „don’t like Monet“. What inspired you to create the complex original artwork? Why this subject?

I never said that I ‘don’t like Monet.’ It’s just that I’m not particularly drawn to Impressionism. I took on this theme because my father loved Impressionism. While studying in Paris, he exhibited one of his works in a show under Monet’s name. For me, this piece is more about my father than about Monet himself.

Q: As you never create work for the so-called „beauty“: How does „Les Nuages“ connect with your personal biography? Do your main artistic theme „freedom of speech“ and personal expression manifest in this particular artwork?

What I value most in art is its historical development and its connection to reality. Personal experiences that lack a link to reality hold little interest for me. Monet, for example, painted over 200 paintings of this theme in his final 20 years—a phenomenon I find intriguing, as it mirrors the reiteration seen in many artists’ work. For me, this serves as a readymade to express my personal experiences and reflections on aesthetics. Using personal insights to reinterpret traditional aesthetic discourse is, indeed, an essential exercise of free expression in the realm of art.

Q: You have been working with LEGO bricks for about 10 years now. Why this choice and what added value do they bring to the realisation of your ideas?

I work with toy bricks—though not necessarily LEGO, as they once refused to sell to me. My choice stems from a lifelong aversion to brushwork on surfaces, which I find overly individualistic, tangled with realism, and heavily influenced by personal taste. I've always sought a more detached form of expression, one that stands apart from personal preference. Toy bricks offer a more distanced, objective medium, a choice not unique to me. The ancient Greco-Romans used mosaics to create art, and today, toy bricks resonate with the pixelated digital expressions seen online. 

Q: This print echoes digital pixelation – what is your relationship with technology?

Technology merely helps us solve certain problems quickly; it cannot accomplish much beyond that. As a product of rationality, technology, through the output of rational processes, often erases what we consider individual expression. While it can be effective at times, I believe that, more often than not, it has the potential to be destructive.

Q: What is the reason you like to do editions of your original works?

The reason is quite simple. When an artwork is considered a unique original, its quality as being unique elevates its added value. Yet, what matters more to me is the accessibility and reach of expression; with a lower price, art can be made more widely available to the public. I believe that aesthetics should not be monopolized but should participate in a broader, more inclusive conversation.

Follow up Interview Questions