Following his own investigation, Ai Weiwei started publishing on his blog the 5,219 names of children who were killed.
The government had censored all information on the students who had died in schools built by the state - which were supposed to be secure enough in case of an earthquake. He navigated his way with a combination of arrogance and self-deprecation at the book talk, he mentioned arriving in the US already believing he "would become the new Picasso."īut at the same time, as he also pointed out, his mother's views on his path have kept everything in perspective: "My mom still does not believe that I'm a successful artist," he said, adding that since he trusts his mother's judgment, he tends to not take everything about the art world too seriously.Īi quickly became renowned for provocative works, which included smashing a million-dollar Han Dynasty Urn in 1995.īut a turning point in his career came following the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, which led to some 80,000 deaths in the region. Living in New York City, he met Allen Ginsberg, on the night the Beat writer happened to be reading his poem on "revolutionary poets" being sent "to shovel shit in Xinjiang Province" - Ai Weiwei's father.Īll this while discovering the works of Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, Ai Weiwei was plunged into an extremely foreign culture. Diving into the New York art sceneįollowing China's reform in 1980, he was among the first generation of students to study abroad. The family returned to Beijing after Mao's death in 1976. He vividly describes in his memoir how their underground space was infested with rats and lice.īut despite the abject living conditions, Ai also recalls gaining a "sense of security" from the exclusion he experienced the there: "The estrangement and hostility that we encountered from the people around us instilled in me a clear awareness of who I was," he writes.Īsked at the book talk how he managed to cope as a child with seeing his father being subjected to humiliation and persecution, the artist shared his theory that he was probably "too dumb" and "insensitive" to realize how much his father could be suffering. In 1967, he was sent with his two sons to what was known as "Little Siberia," in China's far north-west, where he was assigned to cleaning communal toilets.įrom the age of 10, Ai Weiwei lived in a dugout with his father. The ordeal intensified for Ai Qing under Mao's " Cultural Revolution." Despite having burned all his books, he was condemned as a purveyor of bourgeois literature. After his release from prison, Ai Qing became a confidant to Mao Zedong, but that radically changed in 1957īut the year Ai Weiwei was born, in 1957, Ai Qing was rather denounced as a "rightist," during Mao's Anti-Rightist campaign, and was sent to a labor camp with his family.