Ai Weiwei—the Chinese artist better-known as a sculptor and best-known as the imprisoned critic of his country’s government—reveals himself as quite the photographer in the exhibition Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993 at the Asia Society in New York. In a series of over 200 black-and-white photos, he captures the freewheeling spirit that characterized Lower Manhattan’s eclectic community of artists, activists and immigrants near the end of the 20th century.
When he was 24, Ai left his native country for New York to study at Parsons. His time at school did not last long, but he decided to stay in the city, stretching his student stay to include 10 formative years. The photos on display here record his time in Manhattan during a turbulent decade—the images are as likely to include student gatherings as they are violent confrontations with the police.
While this time capsule quality certainly intrigues the viewer, what really captures the attention are the intimate portraits of the artist and the coterie of young Chinese intellectuals surrounding him. As Stephanie H. Tung remarks in her essay in the exhibition catalogue, Ai’s apartment “served as a hub for a group of young, privileged Chinese students abroad.” This proximity shines through in close-up, tightly composed photos that suggest cherished friendship as while as professional admiration.
It is these portraits that also stand out for their thematic, not simply historic or aesthetic, content. Probing concepts of identity construction, Ai catches his expatriates as they refashion their exterior self in a foreign society. What one first notices looking at Yao Qingzhang, 1988 is the frame-within-the-frame. The picture matting functions not as a cheap compositional device but as a reminder of the complex gray area where career and culture meet. Yao, a painter, exists here trapped within a symbol of Western art practice; the rectangle frame acts as the complete antithesis of the traditional format of Chinese painting, the scroll.
In Feng Xiaogeng on top of a rented taxi, Times Square, 1993, Ai demonstrates even more starkly the contrast between East and West. Feng sits tranquilly on a taxi as the hustle-and-bustle of Times Square dominates the composition, as Ai parodies Western perceptions of Asian zen-like serenity. Sardonic, yes, but more than that it exposes the immigrant’s isolation from a Western mainstream that includes only stereotyped extremes.
Here we have not only an impressive collection of photos, but also the groundwork of an entire career. Consider Ai’s Template (2007), a towering structure built from Ming and Qing dynasty windows and doors. In a dramatically different fashion, the same themes are on display in the sculpture as in the New York photography: formal abstraction collides with historically meaningful material to create an expanse expressive both of pure beauty and cross-cultural exchange. With Western postmodernism as his backdrop, Ai adds to this already layered canvas an extra finish that challenges the viewer to consider alternative perspectives to this Europe- and North America-dominated practice.
Hurry before the exhibition closes August 14 to explore for yourself more of these ideas through this artist’s expert eye. And if you are not able to make it to Manhattan, be sure to visit the show’s website (http://asiasociety.org/aiweiwei) to explore more of Ai’s `80s photographic oeuvre
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The Activist as Art Student (aka Ai Weiwei in the `80s)
July 15, 2011
Ai Weiwei—the Chinese artist better-known as a sculptor and best-known as the imprisoned critic of his country’s government—reveals himself as quite the photographer in the exhibition Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993 at the Asia Society in New York. In a series of over 200 black-and-white photos, he captures the freewheeling spirit that characterized Lower Manhattan’s eclectic community of artists, activists and immigrants near the end of the 20th century.
When he was 24, Ai left his native country for New York to study at Parsons. His time at school did not last long, but he decided to stay in the city, stretching his student stay to include 10 formative years. The photos on display here record his time in Manhattan during a turbulent decade—the images are as likely to include student gatherings as they are violent confrontations with the police.
While this time capsule quality certainly intrigues the viewer, what really captures the attention are the intimate portraits of the artist and the coterie of young Chinese intellectuals surrounding him. As Stephanie H. Tung remarks in her essay in the exhibition catalogue, Ai’s apartment “served as a hub for a group of young, privileged Chinese students abroad.” This proximity shines through in close-up, tightly composed photos that suggest cherished friendship as while as professional admiration.
It is these portraits that also stand out for their thematic, not simply historic or aesthetic, content. Probing concepts of identity construction, Ai catches his expatriates as they refashion their exterior self in a foreign society. What one first notices looking at Yao Qingzhang, 1988 is the frame-within-the-frame. The picture matting functions not as a cheap compositional device but as a reminder of the complex gray area where career and culture meet. Yao, a painter, exists here trapped within a symbol of Western art practice; the rectangle frame acts as the complete antithesis of the traditional format of Chinese painting, the scroll.
In Feng Xiaogeng on top of a rented taxi, Times Square, 1993, Ai demonstrates even more starkly the contrast between East and West. Feng sits tranquilly on a taxi as the hustle-and-bustle of Times Square dominates the composition, as Ai parodies Western perceptions of Asian zen-like serenity. Sardonic, yes, but more than that it exposes the immigrant’s isolation from a Western mainstream that includes only stereotyped extremes.
Here we have not only an impressive collection of photos, but also the groundwork of an entire career. Consider Ai’s Template (2007), a towering structure built from Ming and Qing dynasty windows and doors. In a dramatically different fashion, the same themes are on display in the sculpture as in the New York photography: formal abstraction collides with historically meaningful material to create an expanse expressive both of pure beauty and cross-cultural exchange. With Western postmodernism as his backdrop, Ai adds to this already layered canvas an extra finish that challenges the viewer to consider alternative perspectives to this Europe- and North America-dominated practice.
Hurry before the exhibition closes August 14 to explore for yourself more of these ideas through this artist’s expert eye. And if you are not able to make it to Manhattan, be sure to visit the show’s website (http://asiasociety.org/aiweiwei) to explore more of Ai’s `80s photographic oeuvre
