AGO Ai WeiWei Exhibit "According To What?"

AGOAiWeiWei_20130907_101
Originally uploaded by DawnOne

He Xie (2010), AGO Ai WeiWei Exhibit "According To What?" © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2013 Sept.9, 2013, Toronto Canada, an installation of more than 3,000 porcelain river crabs. The term “he xie” refers to the word “harmonious,” which is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s slogan and is now internet slang for official online censorship. In the background are the names of over 5000 school children who perished in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, dead beneath the collapsed rubble of their schools due to substandard building construction which one can trace to corruption on a governmental level. The government in turn tried to mask the enormity of their failure to protect the children by silencing reporting of the event. As a result of China's one child policy, many families had lost their only son or daughter, increasing the personal tragedy. Ai WeiWei and other Chinese activists worked to bring notice to this by compiling lists of the names of children who had died and creating artworks around the subject. Not forgotten or dismissed in this exhibit, they are remembered in several ways- the backpack snake at the entrance, which recalls the hundreds of backpacks and other possessions which lay strewn in the rubble of the schools following the carnage. The audio portion which recites the list of 5000 names inscribed upon the wall. An elegant sculpture, Straight, which gains emotional significance through context- shattered twisted spines, the rebar which failed to support the buildings and led to so many deaths, now straightened and arranged into aesthetically pleasing and orderly piles. Beautiful and sad.
As a result of these attempts to inform the public and the world of this tragic event, he and many others were beaten, persecuted and jailed. Ai Weiwei's blog was shut down, though he still retains a voice on Twitter.
In November 2010, Ai was placed under house arrest by Chinese police, in a failed attempt to prevent a party he was hosting, to mark the impending demolition of his newly built Shanghai studio which officials had suddenly declared 'illegal." In spite of Ai's enforced absence and thanks to social media, hundreds converged on the studio and the party took place without him. Participants feasted upon "river crabs"- symbolic as they represent "harmony" but are also slang for "censorship". This action was documented in first time American director Alison Klayman's film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, who managed to evade the wrath of Chinese authorities and obtain footage no local could have.
Ai was released the following day, but later arrested again on a dubious charges of tax fraud and now confined to his Beijing house in 2011, where he remains, unable to leave China. The party in Toronto, which is this exhibit at the AGO, had to proceed without him, but I hope he is able to access these and other images, in order to view the success with which his message still resonates. According to the video interview he gave during AGO's First Thursday event, he appears however to be a man subdued. He was threatened upon release with the prospect of jail for an undetermined time. As a man with a young child and an aging mother, this is a sobering thought. He rather wistfully said that there would be no more "parties'... but that he had not lost, as he was still the same within...
Linda Dawn Hammond
AGOAiWeiWei_20130907_101