International Art: 1. China's Ai Weiwei: Without end or without direction?

On August 14^th, we anxiously stood in line under a 100m long snake with 50 other members of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) to get a glimpse of one of the most sensationalized contemporary artists of this century: China’s Ai Weiwei.

Weiwei has spent the last decade under house arrest outside of the Beijing airport. His severe political activism and ‘voice that will-not-be-silenced’ has left him with a laneway of colourful video monitors and sound recorders compliments of the Chinese national government.

Despite this, Weiwei is an avid tweeter, facebook and internet communicator, and has sent his artistic visions and plans worldwide to be re-created and displayed elsewhere. This global political exposure has also made him one of the richest artists in the world. On the date of his Toronto opening, Forbes rated Ai the third richest artist in the World! (Number one and two were both gallery owners and sellers, not traditional artists at all.)

Weiwei’s works are circular. An architect by trade, he builds pieces without any beginning or end. ‘Bicycles’ have no seats or handle bars, and are connected throughout the piece. Similarly, ‘stools’ are all intimately connected without a single nail. You cannot separate one from the other; they are a whole.

This may be due to the Chinese culture of group cohesion, the whole working as one. It may also be a comment on where there is ‘no direction’, there is no one to lead.

More mercurial pieces such as ‘moon phases’ are a telescope through the room. Reminding us that at any one time, you can only ever seen a ‘phase’ of a person passing through their changing cycle of life.

Sadly, Weiwei has also been subject to a great deal of pain in his life. Much of this exhibit is taken over as a memorial to all of the school children who have died in substandard schools ruined by earthquakes. Stakes (and snakes) from the dead wreckage, smashed pots of ancestors, and a mourning wall of names stand as reminders to Weiwei that without integrity, we kill.

Contemporary art has the power to do this: it makes you think critically and reflexively. It challenges your world view. Weiwei does this without beginning, context or end. We confront the parallels on our own axis of the globe.