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The five years since Ai Weiwei unveiled his installation of porcelain Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern have been truly momentous and troubling times for the Chinese artist. Not only was that the last time he had a passport and was free to travel to one of his own shows (he has had maybe 100 in the intervening period), but his world-famous name has barely been whispered in his own country since. Yet his homeland provides much of the impetus and thematic content for a major Royal Academy exhibition, which begins with a forest of petrified tree parts from the mountainous south and a giant extruded map of China’s capacious borders, before leading visitors through the ruins of an ancient temple and past the remains of schools flattened by the devastating earthquake of 2008.
It is arguably this latter work, entitled Straight (2008–12) – a monumental wave of steel bars salvaged from the gnarled wreckages of the Sichuan earthquake, painstakingly hammered back to their original state by hand – which landed Ai Weiwei in an unmarked prison for 81 days of interrogation. Much of the accompanying citizen’s investigation that uncovered the names of 5,000 children who died because their schools were inadequately built is also on display here; again, as much a provocation as a work of art. Evidence of his secret incarceration is also on show in the dioramas of S.A.C.R.E.D (2012) – six boxes containing scenes describing the conditions he was put under (the title standing for 'Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy and Doubt').
What elevates this show beyond the political, emotional or merely personal, however, is the artist’s meditations on normal life given a transformative, material twist – a child’s buggy stranded in a sea of marble grass, a sex toy carved from priceless jade, or a simple bicycle, conjoined with others to form a glamorous chandelier. Ai Weiwei is nothing if not contradictory: part destructive force – when smashing a Han dynasty pot, for example – and part keeper of traditional Chinese crafts and antiques, through his modified and mutated Ming furniture. Long may the dissent continue.
Weiwei's controversial art has seen him heavily censored and incarcerated in his home country, but this hasn't stopped him building a dense oeuvre of cerebral, politically charged work. Pictured: Remains, 2015
China remains remains a key source of inspiration for Weiwei's work; the marble sculpture Surveillance Camera, 2010 (right) is a replica of those placed outside his house by the government and a satire on the overbearing nature of the country's surveillance culture. Pictured left: Video Recorder, 2010
Free Speech Puzzle, 2014, is a hand-painted procelain puzzle, created in the Qing dynasty imperial fashion – an example of Weiwei's fusion of archaic Chinese craft with contempoary socio-politcal themes
Straight, 2008–12, landed Weiwei in an unmarked prison for 81 days after he reconstructed, by hand, steel bars salvaged from the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 (a people's investigation found that over 5,000 children died becuase their schools were inadequately built)
INFORMATION
’Ai Weiwei’ is on view until 13 December
Photography courtesy of the artist
ADDRESS
Royal Academy
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD