Interlacing

by Weiwei Ai

Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, highly critical of society and dedicated to the creation of and friction between realities. As an architect, sculptor, photographer, blogger, twitterer, interview artist and political activist, Weiwei acts as a seismograph for current social problems, and blends the boundaries between art and life. Interlacing presents the complexity of Weiwei's oeuvre through blogs, critical essays and hundreds of photographs. Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 and studied at the Beijing Film Academy. In 1978 he co-founded the artist collective The Stars and in 1981 studied under Sean Scully at Parsons School of Design in New York. In 1997 Weiwei co-founded China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW), and in 1999 he opened his studio in Caochangdi. An artist of international acclaim with a particular interest in architecture, Weiwei was instrumental in the design of Beijing's famous 'bird's nest' Olympic stadium.

431 pages, Hardcover

First published July 4, 2011

About the author

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most important living artists. Born in 1957, He lives in Cambridge.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a super lovely look into the mind of Weiwei.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

One day I hope to read a book called "Competitors of Ai Weiwei." Until that time that China has a "modernist movement of any magnitude," as he wrote in 1997, there is him, a prophet who is capable of being persecuted as well as an irreverent media aggregator. I wonder what it would take, at this point, for Ai Weiwei to do wrong, to be ostracized, to do something shameful, or unforgivable. So, critically, there are apologetic statements such as: "The gestural deflection of technical skill (and consequent marshaling of said technical skill, as held by others, in the service of Ai's concept) becomes a key layer of the finished object, the photographs...[they] are the ideal receptacles for his constant contention that his art is mere play." The most striking photographic series in this book, to me, are 7 Frames, a sequential full-body portrait of a Chinese soldier, and Provisional Landscapes, images of land before it has been reappropriated for another purpose (one forgets that the Chinese government owns all the land in the land).