Free-Ai-Weiwei street art campaign
The Free Ai Weiwei Street Art campaign is a protest against the imprisonment of the Chinese artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei . He was arrested on April 3, 2011 at Beijing Airport. Just a few days later, Hong Kong artists began a street art campaign that quickly spread internationally. The sentences "Free Ai Weiwei" and "Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Became the most famous slogans of Protestants.
arrest
Protests and demonstrations by activists critical of the regime have increased in China since February 2011. The demonstrations from February onwards are called the Jasmine Revolution . The name refers to a revolution against the regime in Tunisia that began just months earlier and that made the Chinese government increasingly nervous. As a result, there were numerous arrests and exiles during this period, especially among intellectuals. Ai Weiwei's arrest is probably one of the best known. The official reasons for his arrest were alleged economic crimes, as well as destruction of evidence and dissemination of pornography. Even so, it was an open secret among dissidents and supporters of Ai Weiwei that the real reason for his arrest is his publicly displayed opinion of the Chinese regime. The Chinese regime feared the demonstrations so much that they banned the word “jasmine” and the flower from being sold in stores. Ai Weiwei's place of detention is still unknown today, and not even his family knew anything about his whereabouts. This uncertainty about Ai Weiwei's fate triggered the first protests in Hong Kong just a few days after his capture.
Tangerine
The first street art protest after the arrest came from Chin Tang, a then 22-year-old student from Hong Kong who goes under the code name Chin Tangerine. She sprayed her stencil on walls and sidewalks all over Hong Kong at night. This stencil shows the head of Ai Weiwei, under which the words "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Are emblazoned in English or Chinese. With her action, she herself wanted to draw the attention of others to the arrest of Ai Weiwei:
"He's one of the most prominent contemporary artists in the world right now. And if he can be arrested, then there's no identity we can hide behind: Being a Hong Kong citizen doesn't help anymore; being rich or social status doesn't help. There's no shield anymore against this very naked power that's trying to engulf us. "
The police wanted to prevent this attention by having the street cleaning service remove the stencils just a few hours after they were created. But Tangerine herself is of the opinion that this helped her to achieve the desired level of awareness:
"I have to thank the police for drawing so much attention to this issue. Even if I have to go to jail, I think that would be a very, very worth it price to pay."
Their stencil became so famous in a very short time that many other people in Hong Kong downloaded the stencil and sprayed it all over the city or used it at demonstrations.
Spread the campaign
Many other artists from Hong Kong also excluded Tangerine's street art campaign, so that a campaign soon emerged that was to quickly spread internationally. Cpak Ming, also a Hong Kong artist, participated in the campaign through “flash grafftiti”. He projected a greatly enlarged image of Ai Weiwei for a few seconds onto well-known buildings in Hong Kong. For this he used Tangerine's well-known template. A well-known poster that was created in the course of the street art campaign was the Love The Future poster. This poster was particularly popular with Chinese demonstrators as it enabled a hidden protest. The poster shows a greatly reduced representation of Ai Weiwei in black and white, below which are three Chinese characters in white on a red background. These translate into English as "Love the Future", whereby the pronunciation of the Chinese characters is very similar to the pronunciation of the name "Ai Weiwei". Thus it is possible to hide the protest behind the ambivalent statement. The poster refers to a sticker designed by Shepard Fairey for his "Obey Giant" campaign, which goes back to the wrestler André the Giant .
International
People all over the world quickly took part in the campaign, as Ai Weiwei is known for his art, especially in the West. Numerous posters and graffiti appeared all over the world. The “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei” campaign launched on Facebook. This is based on Ai Weiwei's “Fairytale” at Documenta 2007, which we heard about last week. As you know, every chair from the Qing Dynasty represented one of the people Ai Weiwei made it possible for them to visit the Documenta, whereby he himself is the 1001st. The protest action was about the fact that on April 17, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. people all over the world sit down with chairs in front of Chinese consulates to demonstrate peacefully together. With “Fairytale” Ai Weiwei helped 1000 people, and now 1000 people are standing up for him. However, not quite 1000 people took part, only a few hundred came together at different consulates around the world.
Well-known museums and galleries also took part in the campaign. These include, for example, the Tate Modern Gallery in London, which affixed the slogan “Release Ai Weiwei” to its facade. Ai Weiwei exhibited his Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2009. The Lisson Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Art in New York also speak out against his arrest and in some cases organized signature campaigns. The Kunsthaus Bregenz in particular clearly showed its solidarity with Ai Weiwei. Like the Tate Modern, the Kunsthaus has also made a clear statement on its facade. The phrase “Free Ai Weiwei” was written high up on the facade in large, red letters. In addition, the Kunsthaus asked six well-known artists who had already worked with Ai Weiwei professionally or privately to design a poster for an advertising space. These included Franz West , Olafur Eliasson , Jenny Holzer , Barbara Kruger , Luc Tuymans and Rirkrit Tiravanija . Some of the artists chose clear statements, others showed their solidarity with more abstract posters.
Ai Weiwei was finally released on June 22, 2011, but was not allowed to leave Beijing for a year.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Meigs, Doug: Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei? Certainly not Hong Kong artists , in: cnn.travel.com (2011). Retrieved February 15, 2013.
- ↑ Skrainka, Blaine: Ai Weiwei released! ( Memento of the original from August 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: thewildmagazine.com (2011). Retrieved February 18, 2013.
- ↑ a b c Lim, Louisa: Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest , in: npr.org (2011). Retrieved February 15, 2013.
- ↑ Galperina, Marina: Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei Graffiti - Girl risks 10 years in jail , in: animal-newyork.com (2011). Retrieved February 15, 2013.
- ^ Davis, Ben: 1,001 chairs for Ai Weiwei - protesters wouldnt stand for chinese opression , in: artinfo.com (2011). Retrieved February 27, 2013.
- ^ Liu, Melinda: Street Art to Free Ai Weiwei , in: thedailybeast.com (2011). Retrieved February 18, 2013.
- ↑ Dziewior, Yilmaz: Ai Weiwei . Art / Architecture, Bregenz, 2011. pp. 180–189.
- ↑ Ai Weiwei , in: wikipedia.org (2013). Retrieved February 27, 2013.
