© Ai Weiwei
Exhibition
Ai Weiwei – Interlacing
From 21 February to 29 April 2012
Jeu de Paume – Paris
“Ai Weiwei – Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of photographs and videos by Ai Weiwei. It
foregrounds Ai Weiwei the communicator – the documenting, analyzing, interweaving artist
who communicates via many channels. Ai Weiwei already used photography in his New York
years, but especially since his return to Beijing, he has incessantly documented the everyday
urban and social realities in China, discussing it over blogs and Twitter. Photographs of
radical urban transformation, of the search for earthquake victims, and the destruction of his
Shanghai studio are presented together with his art photography projects, the Documenta
project Fairytale, the countless blog and cell phone photographs. A comprehensive book
accompanies this exhibition.
Ai Weiwei is a generalist, a conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction
with, and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger,
Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and
social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life.
Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world: Through
photographically documenting the architectonic clear-cutting of Beijing in the name of
progress, with provocative measurements of the world, his personal positionings in the Study
of Perspective, with radical cuts in the past (made to found pieces of furniture) in order to create
possibilities for the present and the future, and with his tens of thousands of blog entries, blog
photographs, and cell phone photographs (along with many other artistic declarations). This
first, large exhibition and book project of his photography and videos focuses on Ai Weiwei’s
diversity, complexity, and connectedness, his “interlacing” and “networking” with hundreds of
photographs, blogs, and explanatory essays.
Imprisoned on April 3rd 2011 by the Chinese authorities because of his political activities,
released on bail June 22nd 2011, Ai Weiwei is still, today, banned from leaving the country.
Curator : Urs Stahel
Exhibition coproduced by
Fotomuseum Winterthur and Jeu de Paume, Paris.
In partnership with A Nous, Arte,
Courrier international, Polka Magazine,
Rue 89 and France Info.
To watch the Ai Weiwei’s video portrait: