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The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is visiting Lesbos to document the plight of thousands of refugees who arrive daily on the Greek island by boat from Turkey. For the past two days, Ai has been photographing orange rubber dinghies coming into shore, families huddled around fires, people queuing to register at the Moria refugee camp and piles of discarded lifejackets, among other scenes [...]
It is understood Ai will be creating a work in response to the refugee crisis.
— theartnewspaper.com
Here are just a few of Ai Weiwei's recent photos from the Lesbos refugee camp; giving a human face to people and entire families escaping war and persecution in their home countries of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, as well as documenting humanitarian workers, such as the Norwegian group, Drop... View full entry
Herzog & de Meuron have the widest approach to architecture varying their style for each job. In this sense they epitomise the global search for an architecture of pluralism, one flexible enough for very different cultures...The high quality of the work is as notable as the wit; the amount of production as much as its personality. -RIBA President Stephen Hodder — architecture.com
Herzog & de Meuron, whose works include the recently approved yet controversial Tour Triangle in Paris and the redevelopment of Berlin's Tacheles cultural center, received the 2015 RIBA Jencks Award for being a practice "that has recently made a major contribution internationally to... View full entry
In Beijing, Ai Weiwei is back with a vengeance. The dissident Chinese artist has had four solo shows in the Chinese capital, ending an implicit exhibition ban that had been in place since his arrest in 2011. The fact that the shows, which opened in June, were permitted with minimal interference beyond one amended opening date surprised everyone, including Ai. “I never planned to have a few shows all at once,” Ai tells us. — The Art Newspaper
Related:Ai Weiwei, Jacob Appelbaum and the dissident experienceArt? An interview with Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei Exhibition Underscores Dangers and Importance of Art View full entry
It’s a Thursday morning in Beijing, and the world’s most famous living artist, Ai Weiwei, is sitting with one of the world’s most controversial technologists, Jacob Appelbaum, in the second-floor lobby of the East Hotel. [...]
On a whim, Ai suggests that they call Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living for the last two years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. [...]
Ai and Assange talk for several minutes about the mundanities of the dissident life.
— fusion.net
Friday, October 3:Eisenhower Memorial clears key hurdle on Gehry design: In a positive step for the Memorial's Approving Process Odyssey, the National Capital Planning Commission has OK'd the Commission on Fine Arts (the other federal body that must approve the design) to vote on the... View full entry
For the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect talked with Adora Lo, Architect turned Pro LEGO Builder. They discussed the "challenge of keeping it LEGO legal" and the satisfaction of designing a "Star Wars building in LEGO". midlander was impressed "That Boston model...The Lego... View full entry
Welcome to prison, and a celebration of liberty. Ai Weiwei, the big man of Beijing, has spent years discovering pockets of freedom in the most straitened circumstances, resisting every effort by the Chinese government to shut him down.
This week he opens a major new exhibition in a place that makes that resistance literal: on Alcatraz [...]. The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. But this prison is decommissioned, and Ai is using it to extraordinary effect.
— theguardian.com
Ai’s studio, called 258 Fake, has become China’s equivalent of Andy Warhol’s Factory. And Ai himself has increasingly taken on Warholian overtones: there is now little distinction between Ai the artist who creates artworks, and Ai the dissident who gets beaten by the cops. (In 2009, police pummelled his face, causing a cerebral haemorrhage.) Both are merged in an ongoing performance in which the man has become the art, and the art is the man. — aeon.co
A major exhibition opens in Berlin this week of the work of Ai Weiwei, China's most famous artist. Events like this are the very thing that protect him against further repression at home. The show is packed with moving works that are critical of the regime. — spiegel.de
Yesterday, art lovers around the world were shocked when someone strolled into the Pérez Art Museum Miami and destroyed a $1 million vase by Ai Weiwei. [...]
The vandal is actually Maximo Caminero, a well-known local painter who has shown works at the Fountain Art Fair. He tells New Times that he destroyed the vase to make a point.
— blogs.miaminewtimes.com
"I did it for all the local artists in Miami that have never been shown in museums here," he says. "They have spent so many millions now on international artists. It's the same political situation over and over again. I've been here for 30 years and it's always the same." View full entry
In a SPIEGEL interview, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, 56, discusses how the authorities monitor his movements in sometimes bizarre detail and the feud with the government in Beijing that has kept him from being allowed to leave the country for three years now. — spiegel.de
Architectural follies impose on our assumptions of what architecture is and what it should be -- what is function, what is beauty, where do private and public space meet. Gwangju Folly II, part of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, highlights the politicization of public space through multiple... View full entry
Now Mr. Ai is answering the guards’ request in a different key. He is presenting them, and the world, with his first heavy-metal music video, one with detailed re-creations of scenes from his 81 days of detention. He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards’ minds. Mr. Ai posted the video on a Web site, aiweiwei.com, on Wednesday morning, Beijing time. — nytimes.com
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has faced censorship and imprisonment by China's government. Rita Braver reports on a U.S. exhibit of the dissident's creations. — youtube.com
One media zeitgeist meets another in a new video posted by artist Ai Weiwei showing himself dancing "Gangnam Style." Ai tweeted the video of himself on Wednesday dancing in the style of Korean pop star Psy's popular music video, which has become an international hit. — latimes.com
