Ai Weiwei: “The Venice Biennale should not make value judgments about political positions. The opposite is censorship” | Culture | EUROtoday

If there may be an artist with the required resume to speak about freedom of expression and censorship, it’s Ai Weiwei. And their response to any kind of restriction, no matter who the makes an attempt to silence a voice are in opposition to, isn’t any. This 68-year-old multidisciplinary Chinese creator, who suffered persecution and censorship by his authorities and who immediately lives in exile in Portugal, has additionally lived within the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, the place in 2023 he noticed his exhibition on the Lisson Gallery in London canceled after making statements on social networks criticizing Israel for its assaults on Gaza. That is why he assures that censorship has no borders and is a part of all political methods, together with Western democracies.

Ai, additionally recognized for a creative manufacturing all the time linked to his demand for human rights, not solely analyzes the phenomenon of censorship within the e-book On Censorship (On Censorship), lately printed, however final Tuesday, throughout the inauguration of a retrospective open till September 6 on the Maxxi Museum in L’Aquila (Italy), titled Aftershock, In statements to EL PAÍS, he spoke concerning the controversy surrounding the Venice Art Biennale and the choice of its jury to exclude Russia and Israel from the competitors for the prizes awarded by the exhibition. The jury that made the choice had not but resigned.

According to the artist, “the Biennial should not make value judgments about who to show or not show. That is not its job. They should grant equal rights to everyone, regardless of their political or social positions. That is what we call freedom of expression. The opposite is censorship. I think we must protect the value of freedom of expression. Without that, I think we make society clumsy and stupid.”

Ai, for whom artwork and activism are inseparable, presents in L’Aquila a concise however sharp overview of his whole manufacturing, from the primary photographs he took in New York when he traveled with one of many first scholarships that allowed a Chinese citizen to review there, to his reflections, all the time ironic or incisive on the struggle in Ukraine, the present political polarization, the dichotomy between fact and fiction that dominates the twenty first century or the reinterpretations of artwork classics reminiscent of The scream, by Munch, o Hollywood, by Ed Ruscha.

In 2011 he spent 81 days detained in China for his criticism of his nation’s authorities following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, during which 90,000 folks died. Ai Weiwei labored with a whole lot of nameless volunteers to be taught and publish the names of the greater than 5,000 kids who died below the rubble of poorly constructed and government-censored colleges. He additionally gathered 150 tons of strengthened metal bars rescued from these buildings and straightened them to create a memorial set up, a type of metal lakes with totally different shapes subsequent to the names of all the youngsters, with the title Straight (Right), which evokes the reminiscence of these losses and which occupies the primary three rooms of the L’Aquila exhibition.

Chosen this 12 months because the Cultural Capital of Italy, in 2009 this metropolis was additionally devastated by an earthquake during which building failures additionally weighed closely. Hence, the artist, throughout the presentation of the exhibition on April 28, compelled the organizers to open all of the home windows, from which the injuries of that earthquake can nonetheless be seen within the church of Santa María Paganice, an emblem of that earthquake and nonetheless below reconstruction in entrance of the headquarters of the Maxxi museum. “Life is like a river that runs, passing through the past and looking into the future. We necessarily have to talk and look at our past to understand who we are. Almost two decades have passed since the Sichuan and L’Aquila earthquakes and time has passed very quickly. But in both cases people lost their lives and property. The world changes very quickly. There are still wars in many places. People die every day. So the question should be: do we learn something about humanity at some point? Do we draw lessons from the past?” asks the artist.

In relation to his production, Ai assures that when one begins a new work of art “a wrestle begins as a result of it’s a must to take into consideration the emotions that what you’re doing provokes in you, but in addition some historic and aesthetic features. The kind you give to your works should reply to all these calls for. In the case of Straight For me there was no different doable approach, I could not specific what I wished to say in some other approach. When you produce a piece, it’s a must to be sincere as a result of if not, you threat failing.”

In the exhibition there are a number of creations made with “building bricks for children, like Lego, but from other brands,” emphasizes curator Tim Marlow, director of the Design Museum in London, repeating one thing that Ai all the time desires to clarify in order to not promote a model. These are photographs like After the Death of Marat (2019), the place the artist is seen pixelated by the development items and mendacity face down on the seashore, emulating the demise of little Aylan Kurdi. That Syrian boy, barely two years previous, was discovered drowned on a seaside in Lesbos in 2015 throughout the refugee disaster that adopted the outbreak of the struggle in Syria and his picture grew to become an emblem of Europe’s failure within the face of the exodus of refugees.

Ai’s reinterpretation was a controversial work as a result of he was accused of benefiting from a tragedy, one thing that made him very indignant as a result of he had spent years documenting the refugee disaster in different works such because the documentary human tide o Lotusmade with life preservers recovered in Lesbos and in addition current in L’Aquila. How does Ai see Europe’s present reactionary wave in opposition to immigrants, particularly contemplating that he himself was welcomed by Germany in 2015? “The refugee situation is more or less like the ocean, where there are tides. Sometimes there is high tide, sometimes there is low tide. It depends on the movement of the Earth and the Moon, right? It is a natural effect. But we have to ask ourselves where the refugees come from. Who creates these refugees? Instead of saying ‘we won’t let you in’, we have to assume that we are all refugees because we all come from some generation of refugees. It is not fair to stop them and not stop the reason why they become refugees,” he emphasizes.

Son of the Chinese poet Ai Qing, a favourite of the communist regime though he fell from grace in 1958, Ai grew up with him in focus camps in Manchuria and Xinjiang and was solely capable of return to Beijing in 1976, after the demise of Mao. “That’s why I’m a refugee too. My father was exiled the year I was born, so I can’t consider any place my home. Now I’m in Portugal, but for me every place is like a hotel. Some are more comfortable and some less, some have more sun, others just rain,” he says hurriedly, whereas his assistant who’s timing the dialog.

He thus refers back to the United Kingdom and Germany, the place he has additionally resided for the final decade and the place he additionally felt the blow of censorship, all the time in relation to his criticism on social networks of Israel and the genocide perpetrated in Gaza. “Censorship is censorship, it has the same background everywhere. The powerful society, capitalism or communism. There are no differences. They only try to protect their own interests and survive. China, the United States or Europe. It’s all the same, there is no difference,” he insists.

This thought may be very properly developed in his e-book, the place he additionally highlights a brand new hazard to freedom, synthetic intelligence. “Look, it’s a tool and as such there’s nothing bad about it in itself. However, like all efficient tools, power manipulates them and uses them to monitor us, to control us. I don’t know what we can do to avoid it. I can only say that each individual has the responsibility to protect their dignity. AI can crush our individuality and end our privacy and that is very dangerous.” Ai may be very jealous of his and doesn’t need to discuss anymore, abruptly chopping off the interview. His works, and that magnificent written reflection that’s On Censorship, they communicate for him.