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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">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">US
government seeking his extradition</a> on Espionage Act
charges that could see him locked up forever with a 175
year prison sentence.</p>
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<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"> <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">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">
<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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