An enormous exhibition by the activist Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, designed to draw attention to the world’s refugee crisis, is going on view at some 300 sites around New York City….
An enormous exhibition by the activist Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, designed to draw attention to the world’s refugee crisis, is going on view at some 300 sites around New York City.
“Good Fences Make Good Neighbours,” presented by the Public Art Fund, will be open to the public from Thursday until February 11.
A global trend of “trying to separate us by colour, race, religion, nationality” is a blow “against freedom, against humanity,” Ai said at a Manhattan press conference on Tuesday. “That’s why I made a work related to this issue.”
Ai, now based in Berlin, is considered one of the world’s most successful artists.
He spent his childhood in a remote Chinese community after his father, a poet, was exiled by Communist authorities. He came to New York City as an art student in the 1980s, then returned to his homeland in 1993, using his art and public platform to address political issues.
He was alternately encouraged, tolerated and harassed, spending time in detention and being barred for years from leaving the country.
Since his passport was reinstated in 2015, Ai and his team have travelled to 23 countries and territories and more than 40 refugee camps while making a documentary, “Human Flow.”
The New York exhibition will include three large-scale works and ancillary works throughout the city. Ai expressed a special affinity for Manhattan’s Lower East Side, his former home.
