The dissident sculpture of Ai Song
24th August, 2020
Tucked away behind a winding, sandy track roughly an hour from Beijing’s popular 798 art zone an isolated house stands, neighbour-less, as if it were hiding – which it is. It is the third house Ai Song has lived in recently after being chased out of his last two following government raids. While in the broader context of Chinese dwellings the house is modern and comfortable. For a sculptor who works in an enormous scale the space is modest and compromising, but Ai is unperturbed by his isolation and the practical impediment provided by his smaller than ideal studio. It is simply one of many sacrifices that Ai makes in his career. Above his left eyebrow sits a small laceration, another symbol of sacrifice – the kind that is inevitable for someone whose usual working day consists of 10 hours of bending barbed wire into sculptures and portraits. Amazingly, it is only twelve years since Ai held a government position as the chief art supervisor at the Beijing Automobile museum, before a growing awareness of China’s political realities as well as the restrictions on expression imposed by government-tied institutions in China lead him to venture into contemporary art (Ai 2019). Many of his often grandiose barbed wire works carry a strongly anti-authoritarian sentiment and take on a purposefully conceptual approach, creating a comparison between the restrictive material and China’s political reality. Though Ai has been criticised for the use of strong, recycled symbols and too direct expression a deeper investigation reveals a multifaceted depth to the material-metaphor in its varied anti-aesthetic sculptural adaptations. Ai, like most Chinese, grew up with an ‘imposed education’ and in his investigation of China’s political realities, Ai has emerged from his public servant cocoon a proud and unwavering dissident (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). His education has allowed him to engage with the world beyond China and while his work “is a pursuit of a better future” for the country, Ai strives to exhibit internationally to educate a globally connected community (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019).
At Ai Song’s 2012 debut solo exhibition at the Teda Museum of Contempoary Art in Tianjin massive barbed wire sculptures depicting Maoist revolutionary imagery dominate the gallery space, including a near-to-scale Tiananmen (Castle, 2011), the Chairman’s waving hand (Leader’s Palm, 2012), a cross-stitched iteration of Mao Zedong’s famous Tiananmen portrait (Big Cross-Stitch Portrait, 2012) and an oversized iteration of Mao’s suit (Uniform, 2012). There is an obvious and purposeful riff off China’s strong visual history tied to propaganda and often appropriated by contemporary Chinese artists, most evidently in the Political Pop of the 1980s, which has seen Ai be criticised for ‘duplicating others’ subjects’ (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). Though Ai contends that his works are ‘a transformation of material language… fundamentally different from those expressed in the language of traditional sculpture’ and a necessary risk which responds to a personal need for self-expression (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). Moreover, Ai echoes the words of Sol LeWitt (1967) in stating how the ‘process of thinking of how to do the design is actually more powerful than to complete the work’ and clearly recognises the conceptual form of his works.
Another criticism of his barbed wire works, that they are ‘too direct’, fails to look past the obvious metaphor of the barbed wire as a material invented to constrain cattle and has since become synonymous with human imprisonment (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). Ai not only recognises the directness of the material metaphor, but also considers it necessary, recognising that China has ‘been imprisoned for a long time, that’s why I use this material to express’ (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). The fear of censorship in China has been criticised by Ai Weiwei for fostering a tendency ‘charm viewers with its ambiguity’ while avoiding any meaningful engagement (Ai Wei Wei 2019). The restrictive reality of artistic production in China has led to some banality and a tendency toward fashionable works that ‘fail to express real content’ (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019) whereas Ai Song owns the direct nature of his work, which represents the truth of a ‘harsh and cruel reality’ and deterring from being ambiguous is many artists strategy’ (Ai and UWA, 2019). While also serving to divert government censorship –along with slight variations of the scale of Tiananmen – the title of the work Castle carries a further conceptual art notion in its reference to the unfinished Franz Kafka novel of the same name (1926). Ai also has a wire portrait of Kafka hanging in the entrance to his home. The novel follows a land surveyor, K, sent to a foreign state to measure the perimeter of the entire land but to do so he needs to attain affirmation from the states government who reside in the castle. In typical Kafka style, the seemingly simple act entails a series of legal loopholes and formalities that render K idle and pathetic. The looming, mysterious castle, much like Tiananmen, is rarely accessed by common civilians and rather houses a political elite who ‘guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters’ (Kafka, 1926).
To write off Ai’s barbed wire sculpture due to their directness completely disregards the depth of the metaphor itself, which aside from a nod toward imprisonment also unites notions of transience, salvation and self-sacrifice. Crucial to the metaphor afforded by the use of barbed wire is the temporary and unpropitious nature – the fact that it will rust. As the material oxidizes, corrosion and rust weaken the steel and the structural quality of the works diminishes and so do the icons they depict. Just as the once-sleek silver wire turns to a cracked, arid auburn, the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party will fall one day, or so Ai hopes. Another allusion to physical restraint, wall of barbed wire bricks assembled in Uncertain Collapse (2012) brings a comparison to the now collapsed Berlin wall. We are drawn to think of authoritarian regimes of the past who have been reliant on physical force, propaganda and information control to retain political power. Though many have achieved great power and influence in the world, democracy has time and time again proved the victor. Just as the violent barbs rust, so too do violent powers. Furthermore, the transience of the material implies a pending salvation. In the mere act of sculpting using barbed wire Ai rescues the material from its historical uniform use as a means of threat and restriction. One could also look toward the religious iconography of the crown of thorns, which has been re-imagined as barbed wire tattoos to become a symbol of faith in salvation, as well as the subversion of barbed wire in logos, such as Amnesty International’s. There is also a strong visual metaphor in the combining of tens of thousands of small barbs combining to create such large sculptures, inciting ideas of the power of community and the shared experience of ‘tens of millions of families… living in a political society’ (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). There are clearly equal elements of suffering and hope throughout Ai’s oeuvre.
In considering the scale of some of Ai’s sculptural works there is an illusion that comes into play. From a distance the barbed wire is undetectable and the technical brilliance of Ai Song’s reiterated Maoist imagery shines through, while when viewers start to approach and inspect more closely the harsh, rusted material with its violent and symbolic barbs emerge and evoke the physical pain implicit in their production. In Big Cross-Stitch Portrait Ai creates a dichotomy of illusion and truth when viewed differently. From afar the portrait of Mao Zedong is ‘realistic’ whereas on a closer approach viewers can ‘find out the reality’ (Ai and Gao Brothers, 2019). The realistic/real dichotomy subverts the original intentions of the propaganda portraits to depict Mao as an authoritative and admirable figure to expose the violent and brutish. A similar sensation is evident in Leader’s Palm. While said to depict the waving hand of Mao (Xia 2019), when displayed horizontally – as it was at Teda in 2012 – the palm extends toward a distant viewer, drawing them in and offering a handshake. Drawing nearer to the seemingly kind gesture it becomes clear that the thorny hand can never be shaken. Again the conceptual nature of Ai’s work is evident in the duality of the waving/shaking hand which serves to illuminate the ‘illusion of accessible power’ (Xia 2019). The element of space similarly comes into play considering the hollow insides of Ai’s sculptures which makes each space a sort of prison in itself, where a space is visually but not physically accessible.
Ai Song, Tank,
As aforementioned, Ai Song’s pursuit of self-expression through contemporary art has come with a sizeable and recurring self-sacrifices. To pursue his new career, Ai had to leave his comfortable government post. In his day to day work with the harsh material Ai encounters a series of small cuts which - while also symbolic of the pain he finds in China’s political and social realities – allows Ai to physically pour himself into each work. Most admirable, however, are the commercial impediments brought about by working with barbed wire. Due to their massive weight, as well as their dangerous material (Li 2019), the sculptures have limited mobility making them less attractive to galleries as they do not lend themselves to being loaned and are not easily curated. Their anti-aesthetic and spiky exterior make them less popular among private collectors too. For this reason Ai’s operation consists of only himself and one assistant and, for now, is restricted to only using the cheap materials which were first an excess found in a corner of his studio. But Ai is largely unfazed by his practice’s financial limitations, arguing that to make money in Chinese arts he could ‘follow the rules’ and not ‘cross the red line’ (Ai and UWA, 2019). that gives power and agency to his anti-authoritarian work. Evident in his persistent practice despite monitoring and censorship, Ai’s has no intention of altering his approach for fame or for fortune. He does concede, however, that he is lucky to have exhibited his most radical works ‘which expressed my attitudes’ in 2012 and 2013 and that he could not exhibit those in China today (Ai and UWA 2019). Since, he has had to deploy strategies to avoid government attention and censorship while keeping his dissident tone evident.
Recent works reflect a softer approach to still anti-authoritarian themes. While a transition away from the large-scale sculptures in recent years is almost definitely influenced by his compromised studio space, his most recent works see a return to his earlier sculpture-portrait style. Most recently an exhibition of 100 portraits of - in Ai’s opinion - China’s most influential and admirable intellects was shut down. After a tip off from an old government colleague the entire exhibition was censored due to about 10 of the subjects being dissident figures in direct conflict with the Chinese government, such as Ai Weiwei. For his last successfully exhibited series Twenty-First Century Kindergarten (2018) Ai took children’s self-portraits and traced a second barbed wire portrait over the top. The series responds directly to a 2017 scandal where children attending a chain of popular kindergartens ‘fed pills, jabbed with needles and forced to strip naked’ (Buckley 2017). By imposing the thorned, monochrome portraits over the fantastically bright and hopeful self-portraits Ai comments on the destruction of childhood innocence by the lived reality of China. In the words of art critic Hao Qingsong ‘the wasteland and thorns are impossible to avoid, which are our reality and our children’s inevitable future’ (Hao 2019). Framing social issues in China through the lens of children gives the work at first an innocence which is overwhelmed by corruption. Taking a less directly dissident approach is also a tool for navigating government censorship. It is a similar project to that of friend and Australian-Chinese artist Tami Xiang’s in her series Peasantography (2018). It documents the left behind children whose parents can only afford to survive by leaving their rural families for job opportunities in urban China, but cannot take their families with them due to restrictions in China’s education system, where a child cannot transition from a rural to urban school (Stieven-Taylor 2018).
Ai Song’s recent works shows his adaptability in the face of governmental pressure and practical restrictions. Thought he does not take the in-your-face approach of his debut solo exhibition as much anymore, the subtlety of recent projects satisfies a need to produce in the face of censorship. Ai acknowledges that sometimes the hurdles of censorship can be good for an artist, both to ‘create work and gain attention’ and, moreover, that censorship is ‘part of my life.’ (Ai and UWA, 2019). Furthermore, struggles with censorship have taught Ai that while some works may not be exhibited within China they can be of equal importance exhibited overseas in a global community. He has been exhibited twice internationally and has a joint exhibition with Tami Xiang in October this year at Spectrum Project Space. Internationally Ai hopes ‘that overseas people can see more expression from a Chinese artist’ though he still acknowledges that China is his home and where his work is most powerful and relevant.
By examining Ai’s twelve year career it is evident how a transition from public servant to proud dissident has affected the intention and conditions of his artistic practice as well as his own mindset. Through a journey of education and inward reflection Ai realised he had grown up in an ‘imposed, driven and imprisoned situation’ and was “enslaved” (Ai and Gao Brothers 2019). Within 5 years he was creating the radical and grandiose sculptures which got him in hot water with the government and today he acknowledges he never understood the true impact those works would make on his life. Most importantly through different iterations and applications Ai has developed and deepened his barbed wire motif and metaphor to ultimately express his hope for a better future. In Ai’s poetic words ‘we are still not very beautiful in China, so that is my hope, my dream’ (Ai and UWA, 2019).
Bibliography
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