Every society has constraints that offer opportunity for vision, freedom and courage. "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" by Alison Klayman is a documentary about a man who appreciates the possibilities and challenges of this opportunity in China. Ai Weiwei is an artist who turned his vision and success into an effective and audacious tool for challenging the Chinese government to promote freedom and individual rights.
Here are a few things to know about Ai Weiwei (check out Who inspires: Ai Weiwei and Ai Weiwei: The Evolution of a Dissident)
- Ai Weiwei was one of the designers of the Bird's Nest, the Beijing Olympics stadium. He later publicly denounced the project and his participation in it because the government turned the Olympics games into a massive propaganda for the ruling party.
- During the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, poorly-built schools collapsed, killing a large number of students. As the Chinese government refused to acknowledge issues with the school construction or release the number of children who died during the earthquake, Ai Weiwei and his volunteers identified 5,335 names and pictures of those kids who died. His supporters recorded their names and Ai Weiwei dedicated an exhibition in Munich, "So sorry," to this event while Chinese government shut down his blog and threatened him and his family.
- In 2010 Ai Weiwei had 100,000,000 handmade porcelain sunflower seeds created for his exhibition at the Tate Modern contrasting the mass-production reality of China, centuries of Chinese porcelain art tradition and a sunflower as an accepted symbol of Chinese propaganda art.
From ART BEAUTY LIFE blog.
The original posting "Rooted and Unbendable Ai Weiwei" can be found at ART BEAUTY LIFE blog.
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