Ai Weiwei

Biography

As one of China’s leading contemporary art figure, Ai Weiwei, born in 1957 marked an impressive line of practice experiences as an artist, a curator, an architectural designer, and a publisher. After graduating from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, Ai Wei Wei continued to pursue his love for creating conceptual art at Parsons School of Design in New York. As the son of the famous poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei continued to pursue his love for the arts,creating bold meaningful messages with his works, offering the audiences a new sensation each time.

One may have seen the artistically abstract portrayal of a “Bird’s Nest” by Ai Weiwei how was the commissioned artistic consultant for the design during the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing.  With such a high international spotlight upon him, his works were unarguably showcased inthe 28^th Venice Biennale in Italy (1999), 1^st Montpellie rBiennial of Chinese Contemporary Art in France (2005), Liverpool Biennial International 08 in the United Kingdom (2009) and most recently in the 29^thSao Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2010) just to name some. His solo exhibitions have marked the globe as well ranging from Museum of DKM, Duisburg (2010), MoriArt Museum, Tokyo (2009), Groninger Museum, Groningen (2008) and many more.

Having had such a well established stage in the contemporary art field, his works as an artist has earned him the awards from; Wall Street Journal Innovators Award,Foreign Policy Top Global Thinkers of 2011, Honorary Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts in UK. Recently in 2012, he was elected as the Foreign Member of Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and received an honorary fellowship from Royal Institute of British Architects.

Marble Chairs

Ai Weiwei’s Marble Chairs series was created due because in his childhood years during the Cultural Revolution, the traditional yoke-back chair was one of the sole objects that his family.  The marble chair is a symbol of both continuity and disruption of cultural tradtion that permeate China today. When Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1997, he began to collect Ming and Qing dynasty chairs and started to disassemble and reconstruc tthem into hybrid forms and minimalist sculptures.  The Marble Chair is an inspired by antique Chinese furniture and influenced by the systematic destruction of Chinese culture that began during the Cultural Revolution.

In his well-known installation, ‘Fairytale’ at Documenta XII in Germany involved 1,001 Ming and Qing Dynasty created chairs placed in the largest exhibition site.This grand scale installation mesmerized the audiences, telling the message of the lost traditions in China’s rush to modernize the society, making the chair a powerful memorial to the past.

Selected Exhibitions

Architectural Works