Ai Weiwei and the Refugee Crisis

By Mia Hart

The number of refugees forcibly displaced from their homes in 2022 is estimated to be over 100 million, an increase of twenty-five percent from the year before. The refugee crisis is a perennial issue communicated into the Western consciousness via media outlets, harbouring the power to influence public and private perceptions. Images of overflowing dinghies and large travelling masses are often plastered onto front pages, disseminated with capitalised warning of the dangerous consequences of illegal immigration.

This mode of coverage, often consisting of generalizing figures and statistics, tends to desensitize public consciousness to the chaotic scenes on the borders. Televisions can be switched off and newspapers folded and put away.

The conceptual creations of the artists Ai Weiwei, one of the most prolific producers of refugee inspired art, act as a tool to communicate the refugee experience, visually articulating issues spanning immigration, conflict, and the violation of human rights. Using different media such as sculpture, film, and architecture, Weiwei harnesses his own experiences of political injustice and displacement to produce sobering confrontations with the viewer that are often uncomfortable to digest.

Ai Weiwei was born into the heated political climate of Beijing in 1957, which saw the initiation of the ‘Anti-Rightist Campaign’; a government arrangement under Mao Zedong to eradicate China of its creative outlets such as journalists, writers, and intellectuals. Amongst this outlawed group was Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, a famous poet of the time. Consequently, the whole family was expelled from their home and forced to live in a labour/re-education camp on the border of China where they were subject to daily acts of discrimination and dehumanisation.  

As a result of this displacement from such an early age, Ai Weiwei has been outspoken throughout his artistic career about his resonance with the ‘global refugee condition’, and the detrimental impacts of manipulation of authoritarian power. This traumatic personal history has certainly given impetus to his career and dedication to the inextricability of art and activism, stating ‘an artist must be an activist.’ Ai Weiwei has overtly criticised the authoritarian regime of the Chinese government and their disregard for human rights, his blog which attacked the censorship and corruption of the regime led to his arrest and eighty-one-day incarceration in 2011.

In 2015, during the European Refugee Crisis, Weiwei travelled to the Greek and German refugee camps, witnessing the departures and arrivals of refugees via boats. This experience

inspired the artwork, Law of the Journey, originally constructed for the National Gallery of Prague. This 230-foot, black rubber boat immortalises the image of a forced, unnavigated evacuation undertaken by many. Crammed inside the confines of the boat are 300 inflatable human figures, seeming to overflow the boat’s parameters.  They sit static and faceless, their anonymity citing the consumption of the refugee crisis via media coverage, which often presents them as an undistinguishable mass group of statistics. At the end of the hall there are stairs which lead to an elevated viewing space, revealing the children huddled at the floor of the boat. Isolated figures cling onto dinghies on the bare floor, others appear dead.

Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey, 2017, reinforced PVC with aluminium frame, 60 x 6 x 3m.

The walls surrounding the boat were pasted with a mosaic like patterns of photographs of refugees, shelters, and barbed wire. Televisions played clips from his documentary, ‘Human Flow’, an investigative journey into the personal lives of displaced peoples, stretching across twenty-three different countries. It’s installation into the former 1928 Trade Fair Palace, a congregation for the Jews before their exile to concentration camps pervades this exhibit with a historical potency of suffering and displacement.

The entire viewing experience, curated from different forms of media hinders passive viewing, implicating the viewer into a three-dimensional experience of the crisis. It provides a visual representation for the public consciousness, unable to distance themselves by switching off the news or scrolling past a photograph. Through this moral expression, Weiwei pinpoints the individual experiences of the refugees, condemning the political and civic institutions who have been complicit with their suffering.

His visit to the shores of Lesbos, the first port of entry into Europe for refugees on the eastern Mediterranean route, inspired the piece, Crystal Ball. The debauched lotus flower shape, composed through the contrast of the polished glass orb atop the sun-drenched lifejackets tells a sinister and uncertain fortune for those forced to leave their former lives, and embark on dangerous journeys. The journey of the passengers aboard the Law of the Journey. The reflective surface of the sphere implicates the viewer into the work, you see yourself in this future and must question your own role within the crisis.

Ai Weiwei, Crystal Ball, 2017.

One of Weiwei’s most contentious works is his replications of the notorious photo of Aylan Kurdi face down on a beach in Turkey, after attempting to reach Kos from Kobani in Syria. The original photo sent a harrowing reminder to the public of the grim reality of the crisis, arousing universal concern and becoming an icon of the suffering of all Syrian refugees. The photo dominated headlines and news coverage in the week during, however this attention was short lived. In his recreation taken for the magazine India Today, Ai Weiwei lies lifeless on the pebbled beach of Lesbos. Weiwei then recreated this image with plastic Lego bricks to create a colourful, gaudy composition titled, After the Death of Marat. Through this material which connotes youth and children, Weiwei creates an uncomfortable dissonance between medium and subject matter. It alludes to the suggests the innocence of the boy who lost his life, and the millions of children displaced because of war and conflict. In an interview with the Art Newspaper Ai Weiwei stated the use of Lego was an ‘attack on the establishment’, which dissolves the idea of the ‘iconic’.

Ai Weiwei posing on a beach in Lesbos, taken by Rohit Chawla for India Today, 2016

This image has sparked controversy, with some critics calling the recreation inappropriate and distasteful. However, through these provocative appropriations Weiwei makes an important statement, reminding us of the help we are not providing and the hypocrisy of the short-lived outrage of the original photograph. Since the photo was taken, there are still seventy-million refugees worldwide.

Throughout his works Weiwei exposes and questions the complicity of individuals and collective institutions within the refugee crisis. Through his conceptual creativity he materialises the unheard plight of the migrants into a tangible experience, providing an alternate means of communication.

He seeks to reconcile the separation of humanity with itself, as ‘it’s not about refugees, it is about us.’

Notes:

Biennale of Sydney. ‘Ai Weiwei.’ https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/ai-weiwei/.  

Weiwei, Ai. ‘A brush with…’, interview by The Art Newspaper, 23rd of February 2022. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/02/23/a-brush-with-ai-weiwei   

Weiwei, Ai. ‘The Refugee Crisis isn’t about refugees. It is about us.’ The Guardian, 2nd February 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/02/refugee-crisis-human-flow-ai-weiwei-china