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The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
Thanks to his work with the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron on the Olympic stadium being built here for the 2008 Summer Games, he suddenly finds himself with a rising profile in the architecture world.
Mr. Ai's father, Ai Qing, was perhaps the best-known poet of his generation, and among the most acclaimed Chinese literary figures of the 20th century. But he was caught up in a purge of intellectuals that began in 1957. In 1958, when Ai Weiwei was a year old, the government sent the family away from Beijing in the Gobi Desert, beginning a forced exile from the capital that would last nearly 20 years. Then he enrolled in the Beijing Film Institute and at the same time he began making art and trying to get it shown, and he fell in with the Stars Group, made up of artists and writers, which the government tried to suppress in the late 1970's.
Ai fly to New York in 1981, where he studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League before settling in the East Village to try to make a living as a conceptual artist. In 1993, after Mr. Ai had been in New York more than 10 years, he moved back. Mr. Ai was able to restore the family name to a measure of prominence while still producing sharply political artwork. His house is filled with a mixture of furniture that Mr. Ai designed Ñ some of it straddling the line between functional and whimsical Ñ and traditional Chinese pieces. Just off the dining area is a spacious studio that on a recent visit was nearly filled with an installation of large wooden columns that Mr. Ai salvaged from a 100-year-old temple destroyed in southern China. He said the installation was in part a commentary on the Chinese government's continued destruction of traditional architecture in cities like Shanghai and Beijing to make way for new office towers and residential developments. In 2000 Mr. Ai designed a headquarters for the China Art Archives and Warehouse.
Thanks to his work with the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron on the Olympic stadium being built here for the 2008 Summer Games, he suddenly finds himself with a rising profile in the architecture world.
Mr. Ai's father, Ai Qing, was perhaps the best-known poet of his generation, and among the most acclaimed Chinese literary figures of the 20th century. But he was caught up in a purge of intellectuals that began in 1957. In 1958, when Ai Weiwei was a year old, the government sent the family away from Beijing in the Gobi Desert, beginning a forced exile from the capital that would last nearly 20 years. Then he enrolled in the Beijing Film Institute and at the same time he began making art and trying to get it shown, and he fell in with the Stars Group, made up of artists and writers, which the government tried to suppress in the late 1970's.
Ai fly to New York in 1981, where he studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League before settling in the East Village to try to make a living as a conceptual artist. In 1993, after Mr. Ai had been in New York more than 10 years, he moved back. Mr. Ai was able to restore the family name to a measure of prominence while still producing sharply political artwork. His house is filled with a mixture of furniture that Mr. Ai designed Ñ some of it straddling the line between functional and whimsical Ñ and traditional Chinese pieces. Just off the dining area is a spacious studio that on a recent visit was nearly filled with an installation of large wooden columns that Mr. Ai salvaged from a 100-year-old temple destroyed in southern China. He said the installation was in part a commentary on the Chinese government's continued destruction of traditional architecture in cities like Shanghai and Beijing to make way for new office towers and residential developments. In 2000 Mr. Ai designed a headquarters for the China Art Archives and Warehouse.
- Copyright
- Alessandro Digaetano
- Image Size
- 4288x2848 / 3.2MB
- Contained in galleries
- Portraits
