[D66] [JD: 114] Ai Weiwei’s artwork in support of Julian Assange rejected by Firstsite UK exhibition | WSWS

[R.O.]

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/ai-weiwei-the-great-big-art-exhibition-1975114

On 16-06-2021 08:40, R.O. wrote:
> wsws.org <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/14/weiw-j14.html>
>
>
>   Ai Weiwei’s artwork in support of Julian Assange rejected by
>   Firstsite UK exhibition
>
> 8-11 minutes
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Globally recognised artist Ai Weiwei has said the decision by British
> visual arts organisation Firstsite to exclude an artwork invited from
> him is an attempt to silence his continued support for Julian Assange.
>
> Firstsite had “used my name to promote the so-called ‘biggest
> exhibition’ in the UK while also deciding against the core values of
> art, freedom of expression.”
>
> Ai’s /Postcard for Political Prisoners/ was explicit in its aim to
> enlist support for Assange, under conditions in which days before the
> exhibition was to open Assange had just undergone a show trial in
> London, with the US government seeking his extradition
> <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/10/pers-j01.html> on
> Espionage Act charges that could see him locked up forever with a 175
> year prison sentence.
>
>
> Ai said he was “honoured” by the rejection, which “gave a real meaning
> to my artwork.” He explained, “I think the reason is related to
> Assange who has been incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London
> since his arrest on 11 April 2019, and that they don’t want to touch
> on a topic like Assange.”
>
> Firstsite’s “Great Big Art Exhibition,” which ran from January 28 to
> May 9, was billed as “a 100 day celebration of the creativity in each
> and everyone of us.” It was intended as a means of sharing art in
> “front windows, gardens, balconies and outdoor spaces.”
>
> Firstsite invited contributions from prominent artists. The idea was
> that artists would respond to a different theme every two weeks,
> encouraging the broadest possible creativity and sharing of responses.
> On January 18, Ai was invited to contribute, and told that “artworks
> can be made of anything.” Four days later, Firstsite director Sally
> Shaw rang him. Following Ai’s agreement to participate, he and
> Firstsite were in constant contact about the content of his contribution.
>
> Ai revisited his work at a 2014 exhibition at the former Alcatraz
> Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco, where he made postcards printed
> with the address of a political prisoner. Visitors were encouraged to
> write on the postcards, which were later sent to the prisoners.
>
> The artwork delivered to Firstsite on April 22 was titled /Postcard
> for Political Prisoners/. Sending it over, he told Firstsite they were
> still awaiting an Amnesty International list of political prisoners
> who would be able and willing to receive mail from the public.
> Firstsite thanked him “for all you’ve done to get this to us.”
>
> On April 25, Ai advised Firstsite of delays in getting information
> from Amnesty International. There were so many political prisoners it
> was proving hard to collate their details. Ai asked about posting
> details of the project on the Firstsite exhibition website.
>
> They did not reply, nor to follow-up communications on May 13 and 17.
> Ai’s studio then asked Greg Hilty, director of the Lisson Gallery in
> London, to continue the inquiries. On May 20, after 27 days of
> stonewalling, Sally Shaw rejected the work.
>
> Firstsite, she wrote, were “unable to take it forward for two reasons.
> Sadly, due to the timing of when the idea came through from the
> studio, it has made it difficult for us to include it... Also, the
> concept of the project is to encourage people across the nation to
> make artworks and display them in their windows. The sending of a
> postcard takes us away from this intention. I must assure you,
> sincerely, that this is in no way a reflection of our appreciation of
> the idea itself, which is remarkable and profound, and equally our
> esteem for Weiwei and his work.”
>
> Ai wrote that Shaw’s message had “exactly the same tone as a rejection
> letter sent to job applicants,” although she had solicited his
> involvement in the first place. He dealt with Shaw’s two stated
> reasons. The question of timing was spurious. He had been given no
> deadline for his contribution, and it was still in good time for the
> exhibition’s final theme, “Performance.” Ai said it would have fit
> well here, “thematically and temporally.”
>
> Regarding the idea that the postcard form “takes us away” from the
> exhibition’s aims, Ai asked, “Why wouldn’t my conceptual artwork
> /Postcard for Political Prisoners/ inspire people to make artworks in
> the form of a postcard and engage in art-activism? What could stop
> participants from sending the postcard to themselves and pasting it on
> the window?”
>
> At issue, he insisted, was the work’s content. The reverse of the card
> featured a sketch from his 2015 work /All Fingers Must Point Down/
> <https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/Ai%20Weiwei/artworks/all-fingers-must-point-down?image_id=15306>.
> The front focused attention on the world’s highest profile political
> prisoner, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.
>
> In 2016, Ai interviewed Assange who had received asylum at the
> Ecuadorian Embassy in London. That October, Assange gifted him his
> treadmill, an image of which is on the front of /Postcard/. Ai has
> long demanded
> <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/02/assa-a02.html> Assange’s
> freedom, saying, “I am a strong supporter of Assange because I firmly
> believe in the importance of investigative journalism in a civil society.”
>
> He felt “the combination between my encounter with him and my ongoing
> interest in sending letters to political prisoners was crystallised
> into /Postcard for Political Prisoners/. It is a project which not
> only shows care to political prisoners, but it also encourages
> participants to reflect upon the relationship between the freedom that
> they enjoy and the price these fighters pay for that freedom.”
>
> Ai asked pointedly, “Whom has my postcard with Julian Assange’s
> treadmill offended?”
>
> He noted a general reluctance even to mention Assange, as witnessed in
> Shaw’s clumsy response: “she seemed too afraid to give us a straight
> answer and too maladroit to round it off.”
>
> They are not alone: “Everyone is avoiding it—not just in the
> mainstream media, but in the circles of art and culture in general.”
>
> Ai’s statement in /ArtNet News/ was intended, he said, “to provoke
> everyone reading to think about the role that contemporary art plays
> in daily life.”
>
> This incident “unravels… the art world’s hypocrisy and corruption to
> reveal a world that considers art as a decoration and a sedative
> within our capitalist and consumerist society, a world where cultural
> activities concern culture alone and nothing more.”
>
> He called out the hypocrisy of the exhibition, and its museum backers,
> for advocating a democratic freedom of expression it actively denied,
> and which it has transformed into a form of flattering the powerful
> and wealthy. Firstsite rejected his work, but their website continues
> to thank Ai for his contribution. “I feel ashamed,” he wrote, “that
> nowadays all art does is whitewash.”
>
> Ai (b. 1957, Beijing) is a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist
> Party’s record on democratic rights. When he was detained for 81 days
> without charge in 2011, it suited many imperialist politicians to use
> his case as a lever against China. Among them were the very forces now
> lined up against Assange. It is to Ai’s credit that he has not
> comfortably adapted to these regimes since leaving China in 2015. He
> spent four years in Germany, of which he said, “I don’t like a state
> or culture that so obeys authority.” He moved to a Britain he
> recognised as “colonial.”
>
> Ai has increasingly explained his art as a political response to the
> world, telling the /Guardian/, “If my art has any meaning, it is as a
> tool for freedom. If I see people victimised by authoritarianism, I am
> a soldier in defending their freedom.”
>
> He repeated these themes in his response to Firstsite: “Art has become
> a tool to numb ourselves so that we may avoid introspection. Any
> reflections through art are undesirable because they evoke pain and
> suffering and, if we delve into it, we would all be found guilty—and
> artists are guiltier than others because we have far more
> opportunities for free expression.”
>
> The comments touch not just on the corruption of a corporate art
> world, but address the question of how artists need to respond to the
> world today.
>
> Much of Ai’s recent work has lived up to his view that “contemporary
> art should be related to people’s lives and concerned with
> humanitarian ideas; art is, first and foremost, about human beings.”
> Many of his works have shown a genuine sympathy with the oppressed at
> a personal level, although they have sometimes struggled to go deeper.
> The WSWS noted that everyone interested in the defence of the rights
> of immigrants should watch his remarkable documentary /Human Flow/
> <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/15/flow-n15.html>, but “with
> an understanding that the film lags far behind the times in terms of
> its political content.”
>
> The rapidity of political change may be pushing Ai further. The design
> of /Postcard/ was based on a “personal contact with Assange,” but the
> continued threat to the journalist, and suppression of even a
> favourable mention of him, are forcing Ai to consider the burning
> questions, “What is art and what is its purpose”. He is right to
> conclude that Firstsite’s “rejection made /Postcard for a Political
> Prisoner/ a truly worthwhile project.”
>
>
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