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<address><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://news.artnet.com/opinion/ai-weiwei-the-great-big-art-exhibition-1975114">https://news.artnet.com/opinion/ai-weiwei-the-great-big-art-exhibition-1975114</a><br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 16-06-2021 08:40, R.O. wrote:<br>
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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/14/weiw-j14.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">wsws.org</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">Ai Weiwei’s artwork in support of
Julian Assange rejected by Firstsite UK exhibition</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">8-11 minutes</div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Ai’s <em>Postcard for Political Prisoners</em> 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 <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/10/pers-j01.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">US government seeking his
extradition</a> on Espionage Act charges that could
see him locked up forever with a 175 year prison
sentence.</p>
<figure><figcaption><br>
</figcaption></figure>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The artwork delivered to Firstsite on April 22 was
titled <em>Postcard for Political Prisoners</em>.
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Regarding the idea that the postcard form “takes us
away” from the exhibition’s aims, Ai asked, “Why
wouldn’t my conceptual artwork <em>Postcard for
Political Prisoners</em> 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?”</p>
<p>At issue, he insisted, was the work’s content. The
reverse of the card featured a sketch from his 2015 work
<a
href="https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/Ai%20Weiwei/artworks/all-fingers-must-point-down?image_id=15306"
target="_blank" rel="noopener" moz-do-not-send="true">
<em>All Fingers Must Point Down</em></a>. The front
focused attention on the world’s highest profile
political prisoner, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.</p>
<p>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 <em>Postcard</em>. Ai has <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/02/assa-a02.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">long demanded</a> 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.”</p>
<p>He felt “the combination between my encounter with him
and my ongoing interest in sending letters to political
prisoners was crystallised into <em>Postcard for
Political Prisoners</em>. 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.”</p>
<p>Ai asked pointedly, “Whom has my postcard with Julian
Assange’s treadmill offended?”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>They are not alone: “Everyone is avoiding it—not just
in the mainstream media, but in the circles of art and
culture in general.”</p>
<p>Ai’s statement in <em>ArtNet News</em> was intended,
he said, “to provoke everyone reading to think about the
role that contemporary art plays in daily life.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Ai has increasingly explained his art as a political
response to the world, telling the <em>Guardian</em>,
“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/15/flow-n15.html"
moz-do-not-send="true"> <em>Human Flow</em></a>, but
“with an understanding that the film lags far behind the
times in terms of its political content.”</p>
<p>The rapidity of political change may be pushing Ai
further. The design of <em>Postcard</em> 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 <em>Postcard for a Political Prisoner</em>
a truly worthwhile project.”</p>
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