Last night we attended the massive installation “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” by dissident Chinese
artist and activist, Ai Weiwei. It takes months of planning to get a ticket
and is profoundly worth the wait and effort.
Created for and set in the crumbling and horrifying remains
of the prison on Alcatraz Island, the installation is divided into seven parts,
each with its own distinct and often visually beautiful perspective on
imprisonment, domination, freedom,
isolation, and the bleak endlessness of incarceration.
A recurring technique in many of Ai’s pieces is the use of
massive quantities of something, often a hand-created something in honor of his
reverence for craft. An oft-cited fact
about one of the pieces in this installation, “Trace”, is the use of 1.4
million Lego pieces. But the
installation is powerful for reasons that are greatly beyond this notable quantity.
Trace is an installation depicting portraits of 176
individuals incarcerated for their beliefs, most of them still held as of June
of this year. Ai refers to them as heroes,
though many people on my tour questioned certain individuals such as Edward
Snowden being called a hero. I found the
effect of the Lego portraits to be profound.
It is so very easy to read about dissidents, to see them as far off from
one’s everyday life, to know of them in a small, faraway way. The first impression of these dozens of portraits
is one of pixilation, difficult to identify.
And then. Then your eyes begin to
see them and take in the enormity of their sheer numbers. The millions of pieces begin to make sense in
relationship to the millions of individuals around the world whose freedom is
compromised.
Just as we began to
leave “Trace”, we decided to take a few photographs with our phones and
discovered that viewed through a phone’s camera, the portraits became instantly
clear, the blurriness of pixilation gone, as if to reflect on how information
about today’s dissidents is instantly and clearly communicated thanks to
technology. It changed the entire
experience, added a deeper level of meaning.
“Blossom” takes place in the prison hospital, often a place
of residence for the mentally ill, a place of desolation. Here, Ai has filled the old discolored sinks,
toilets and bathtubs with tiny precious white porcelain flowers, filled to
overflowing and which at first glance could be Styrofoam peanuts. Who knows how many blossoms there are, who
knows how many cries took place in this place of horror and in others around
the world? What a contrast between these
horrible porcelain fixtures and these tiny pieces of art, a contrast of
purpose, a reminder that those imprisoned for their thoughts never see or
receive flowers of any sort.
It is often noted that art has the power to reveal and
re-color reality. In the case of @Large,
Ai does even more than that. He
explores, examines, exposes and ultimately fills us with the enormity of the commitment
of individuals for their beliefs. Extraordinary.
No comments:
Post a Comment