Ai Weiwei's Art of the Everyday

Ai Weiwei has been one of the most unique Chinese artists world wide for his political outspokenness against the Chinese government. His recent arrest and release has further affirmed him as a world symbol of, as the New York mayor Michael Bloomberg puts it, the “indomitable desire for freedom” inside every human being. Although he draws much world media attention, scholarly approach to Ai Weiwei’s art has been scarcely conducted. One of the important exceptions is Karen Smith, who have studied Ai’s major works, from his early ones in the 1980s to the recent exhibitions. Karen Smith  theorize Ai Weiwei by tracing him back to Western avant-garde tradition, and describes him as a “giant provocateur.”^[1]

However, seeing Ai from the top-notch perspective of the Duchampian concept and examining his exhibited works under the spot lights may overlook his another side: the witty “dirty little tricks” Ai has done to be a giant provocateur. Over the years, Ai has tried to drag contemporary Chinese art down to the everyday life, from inside the museum walls to the locations where social injustice was said to be committed, and thus turn art into a weapon to fight against the power. What is important about this practice is that, as will be detailed in this paper, he did it through his own unconventional way and his way is creative, organic and effective.

My focus of Ai Weiwei’s art, therefore, is his less known ones, such as the amateur video clips he made, and daily photo snapshots he took, or even the T-shirt images he designed. These daily creations of art have been largely neglected in the major scholarship and I argue that they should be treated seriously. In fact, as will be demonstrated in the paper, Ai’s everyday art is intertwined with what he had been doing before his arrest, his activist actions. Ai has admitted that activism is integral to his art making, and he collapsed the boundary between them.^[2] He vocally underscored life over art: “We can exist without art; but not without everyday experience.”^[3] Yet, on the other hand, it is through artistic means that he was able to effectively raise the awareness of political issues in China, as he adds: “When everyday experience is well deserved, it becomes art.”^[4] His everyday life, activism and his art feed one another and become inseparable. Therefore, to analyze Ai’s influence to the world, his art of the everyday has to be included into his corpus.

Ai’s everyday art not only allows us to better understand his art in general, but more importantly reveals how contemporary art, within the political environment where the freedom of speech is absent, can grow creatively and organically, in the dynamic interrelations among contemporary art, everyday life and political activism. Over the years, Ai has developed unique strategies to maneuver through the political censorship in China, through the indigenous creation of the mixture of the activist’s everyday and art. What he has accomplished is inspiring to anyone in the world who wants to fight against the power creatively and effectively.

Ai’s everyday art also serve as a critique to contemporary Chinese art. His attitude, method, conducts, and perception of art and activism, particularly his risk-taking engagement with sensitive political issues not only pose a challenge to the mainstream Contemporary Chinese art milieu — that is generally more comfortable with the establishment — but also provides an opportunity for this milieu to go back to the Chinese tradition of art for society’s sake.

The theoretical basis for this insight is the collapsed boundary between art and the everyday life. Instead of following the Duchampian direction put forward by Karen Smith, my analysis closely relate Ai’s everyday art to his own theories, and contextualize them in Chinese intellectual history. The first part of the paper positions Ai in the context of contemporary Chinese art, and through his own remarks explain his belief that art should be engaged with the everyday experience. From the second part forward, the paper studies concrete examples of Ai’s art of the everyday, starting from the amateur documentaries he made, with the particular focus on the strategies he uses to mix everyday activism with art. After that, the paper explores Ai’s strategies with online social media and his involvement in a new art form known as e’gao, an online youth culture through which he mocked the authority in an unofficial yet effective way. The last part investigates the social events he organized, which, inspired by Joseph Beuys’ concept of social sculpture, involved the public into his art and activism.

Ai Weiwei in the Context

“In a country without freedom of speech, how can we make art?”

This question, put forward loudly and clearly by Ai when he was giving one of his many interviews two years ago, touches the problem at the core of contemporary Chinese art.^[5] The question can be elaborated as: on what basis do contemporary Chinese artists establish their avant-garde appeal given the fact that they are not even allowed the basic right to freedom in China? A simple question as it is, few noted Chinese artists, critics, or art historians have been willing to answer it, because they are facing the dilemma between longing for artistic freedom and subjection to state control. The fact of the matter is that — as implied by Ai — contemporary Chinese art after 1990s thrive without this freedom; yet, many artworks are still presented as the avant-garde. Their legitimacy is thus brought into question.^[6]Although Ai has not vocally provided a solution for his fellow Chinese artists, he has demonstrated his attitude: never compromise to fight for freedom.

Best articulated in his article The Difficulties and Opportunities of Contemporary Chinese art,^[7] Ai harshly criticizes contemporary Chinese art community for their detachment of cultural and political reality in China. “Their artworks try to avoid social and political issues. When they do have to talk, they render these issues ambivalently, or to the extent of self-denial, self-sarcasm, and self-torture,”because, implied by Ai,  these artists sacrificed truth and justice for personal security.^[8] This direct accusation is apparently a disharmonious punch in the community. Over the years, very few Chinese critics have gone this far to make enemies with their peers. Only a few daring critics have echoed Ai’s criticism. A young art historian He Guiyang, for example, derided the elitist status of contemporary Chinese art for its aloofness to the mass audience.^[9]Lu Hong, another revered art historian, criticized the blind imitation of art forms from the West without considering China’s social reality.^[10]All this criticism points to the fundamental question of art in today’s China: Should contemporary Chinese artists assume social responsibilities to fight for the freedom for themselves and the society at large? Or should they be freed from social obligations and pursuit only their individual idiosyncrasy under the aegis of postmodernism?

Art for society’s sake has been a long-standing belief in China. Historically, Chinese literati firmly hold that art should serve society and promote morality and justice through constructive commentary or fight against the power. In Republican China of the early twentieth century, artists and intellectuals were highly involved in social movements. Many of them were leaders of the May-Fourth Movement, a radical cultural and social transformation that prompted China’s modernization. Artist Xu Beihong, for example, introduced Realism to China and actively involved in the Leftist political campaigns. In the 1980s, when Chinese culture was going through a revival from the ruin of the Cultural Revolution, the “humanistic spirit,” a zeitgeist idea to call forth a collective return to the philosophic tradition of humanism that had been missing since the Cultural Revolution, was extremely popular, if not fundamental, in works of art and literature during this time period. The 1980s generation of Chinese artists were hence deeply rooted in the social fabric. For example, Luo Zhongli’s Father(1980) depicts an old and broken fatherly figure who realistically represents the poor living condition in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. It was the social reality behind the painting that struck the souls of many, and contributed to the success of the painting, which has been revered as a milestone of contemporary Chinese art.

However, after the Tiananmen Massacres in 1989, the Chinese government tightened its control over the freedom of speech. Consequently, artists found it difficult to express social concerns. Although there was sporadic breaching of the control, it is generally believed that the value system of contemporary Chinese art had shifted towards marketability.^[11] Market success has been prioritized and along with it was the new paradigm of contemporary Chinese art featuring individual experiences; collective social engagement has been displaced as peripheral or non-consequential — art no longer serves as a moral safeguard for society. Formalistically, this trend helps contemporary Chinese art to keep up pace with the international art trend; but sociologically, it uproots its traditional role in society.

In this socio-historical context, Ai’s art practices arguably bring contemporary Chinese art back to its tradition of art for society’s sake. While many other Chinese artists are enjoying their fame and comfort, Ai ventured out to investigate the dark side of the society, risking his personal safety until he was imprisoned. He once stated that art “has its value only when it is acted out for [social] experiment.”^[12]His emphasis on social engagement prompts us to look beyond the white cube and switch to his art of the everyday, things he made to critique the social realities. Over the years, Ai has been documenting his own daily life. His everyday can be said to be a Chinese activist’s everyday, as well as the everyday of an average Chinese in his perception. Similar to Marcel Duchamp, as Karen Smith points out, Ai has taken art out of the art museum into the everyday life.^[13]A further inquiry would be to examine how Ai collapsed the boundary between art, everyday life, and activism in China. In another words, how does Ai creatively use everyday art as a weapon to fight against the authority?

Ai’s everyday experience is obviously not a mundane one because fighting against the all-powerful Chinese government is similar to walking on thin ice. Nonetheless, Ai has been very brave in his daily activism — for instance, his leading a demonstration on Tiananmen Square^[14] — an act that no one had ever done since the student protest in Tiananmen in 1989. Since most Chinese artists are unwilling to touch upon sensitive politics, Ai has been a prominent anomaly. Over the years, he has been particularly interested in the most provocative political events, in which corruption were said to be the culprit, for example, the allegedly government mishandling of the Sichuan earthquake victims and police excessive force against civilians.^[15]Given the growing legal rights movement in China, Ai has been revered by many victims of social injustice, many activists and some public intellectuals.^[16]It is important to note that Ai is a unique case among the Chinese activists. He has more social resources than many other activists and he utilized these resources well. Ai has long been a world-known Chinese artist since late 1990s. His international status seems to have shielded him to some extent from state prosecution and have resulted in his quick release from the prison. Some critics suggest that Ai’s high profile communist family background gave him some sort of special power that other Chinese activists do not have.^[17] With this cultural capital and social resources, Ai was able to carry out his everyday activism without being prosecuted too soon, and had the ease to turn activism into art. One example for his everyday art is his amateur documentaries that he made during the course of his activism.

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