Thursday, March 19, 2015

Ai Wai Wai - Done Good.

Just yesterday morning the Burren College of Art, as part of their Wednesday lecture series, aired a documentary video piece on the prominent Chinese Artist Ai Wai Wai.

Last month while in Barcelona I had the chance to visit a retrospective of Ai Wai Wai's work held at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge on La Rambla. The show spanned a gigantic portion of his interests and output from his early years in New York to works documenting his more recent incarceration at the hands of the Chinese government.

I find him a fascinating character. His works explore 'the tensions between truth and lies, evidence and ambiguity, control and freedom, politics, art, power and society'.*

There is much information on Ai Wai Wai online. He is an avid blogger and uses many social media platforms like twitter to communicate his ideas, tell his story and bring to light the need for more transparency the world over. He believes that we all have a duty to work towards producing a new and better reality.

I'll leave you with these provocative couple of lines and image below. It's food for thought!

'We are actually a part of the reality, and if we don't realize that, we are totally irresponsible. We are a productive reality. We are the reality, but that part of reality means that we need to produce another reality.' - Al Wei Wei

*extract from an essay by Independent Curator Rosa Pera.
#aiwaiwai #ethancohen #burremcollegeofart #artist #richardhearns #barcelona
























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