Publication Type
Book Chapter
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
1-2021
Abstract
In the past decade, Ai Weieiwei has burst out from his limited role of a Chinese artist to become an artist-activist who has “gone global.” Ai first gained international fame as the consultant for Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium, which was designed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron. Just before the 2008 Olympics, however, Ai became infamous for denouncing the stadium as China’s “fake smile” to the world. In October 2010, Ai fascinated the art world with his Sunflower Seeds exhibit at London’s Tate Modern art gallery; before the exhibit closed in May 2011, Ai became a global political figure when he was illegally detained by the Chinese government for eighty-one days. After years of postdetention harassment by China’s party-state, in 2015 Ai moved into self-imposed exile first in Germany and subsequently in the United Kingdom, where he continues to produce compelling art—and activism. This chapter charts Ai’s transition from being a “Chinese” artist to being a global artist. In China, Ai worked as a patriotic Chinese dissident to criticize the illegitimate power of the corrupt Communist party-state.
Discipline
Asian Studies | Political Science | Politics and Social Change
Publication
Global East Asia
Editor
Frank N. Pieke & Koichi Iwabuchi
First Page
104
Last Page
114
ISBN
9780520971424
Identifier
10.2307/j.ctv1wmz3j5.13
Publisher
University of California Press
City or Country
Oakland
Citation
CALLAHAN, William A.. (2021). Ai Weiwei and the global art of politics. In Global East Asia (pp. 104-114). Oakland: University of California Press.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4366
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1wmz3j5.13