Ai Weiwei vindicates the imagination of Don Quixote

Lion,

Ai Weiwei has said that, during his childhood in the Chinese deserts of Xinjiang, an illustrated copy of Don Quixote that his father, the poet Ai Qing, possessed, served to open his imagination to more distant scenarios than those provided to children educated during Mao’s dictatorship: there was then nothing more distant, for him, from the inculcated dialectical materialism, which the adventures of a gentleman with problems distinguishing what is real from what is imaginary.

That is the reason why the retrospective that, starting this weekend, the MUSAC in León is dedicating to him is titled “Don Quixote”: under the curation of Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya, director of this center, it brings together forty projects carried out in recent years. twenty years, as always halfway between pure creation and activism in favor of Human Rights. This exhibition will also provide the opportunity to see a series of paintings that Weiwei has recently made with LEGO pieces: there are nineteen compositions of this type that he has developed, using blocks of forty colors, in order to recreate this such as famous paintings from the history of art or images taken from the media; For the artist, the firm’s toys have already acquired the role of timelessness, and he compares them in that sense with textile and carpet designs, printing with movable wooden types of the Song dynasty or ancient Roman mosaics.

LEGO aside, other creations gathered in León represent free reinterpretations of the Duchampian concepts of ready-made and object found (Lotus, Olive Tree Roots), evocations of traditional Chinese techniques (we will contemplate two monumental works in bamboo that allude to the Ming dynasty) or visual translations of the linguistic tropes of the Chinese language, in some cases also becoming criticisms of Internet censorship (A jump with Caonima). The defense of free expression and a humanitarian and generous sense of life is evident in many of his sculptures, photos, ceramics, paintings or proposals linked to writing.

One of those great works in bamboo is The cycle of life (2018); Weiwei began to use this material, used in the production of kites since the end of the Middle Ages, more than a decade ago. In this case, with him he has built a boat full of figures inside, in reference to the precarious boats in which migrants cross seas to reach Europe; Several of these figures carry the heads of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. This transport oscillates between the ethereal and the durable, the air between the pieces will allow the public to look at them without noticing the drama to which they allude, a situation similar to that which occurs, perhaps, when faced with information about shipwrecks in the media.

Similar theme shares crystal ball; In a large one, linked to clairvoyance, we will peer into an inverted world of out-of-focus reality. The piece is heavy, but it stands on a pile of life jackets from Lesbos and used by those fleeing their countries. The fate of this globe-world is unstable and precarious, but it would not depend on chance or destiny, but on our action in the face of these catastrophes.

Ancient carvings, ceramics and wall paintings from Greece and Egypt, along with iconography found online, inspire formal Odysseya wallpaper frieze referring to various forms of modern conflicts; It is structured around six themes: the war, the ruins, the journey, the sea crossing, the refugee camps and the demonstrations. This project, in which Weiwei spent half a year drawing, is related to the somewhat earlier documentary human tiderelated to forced migrations and filmed in more than twenty countries and in forty refugee camps.

We will find the glass again in the installation The human comedy; It comes from Murano and there, precisely, this immense black chandelier, weighing almost three tons, was manufactured. This object in its classic version is here reinvented through the assembly of mythological figures, human skulls, skeletons and internal organs, bones and animals such as crabs and bats. It embodies the now complex relationship between humanity and nature, a balance that Weiwei was already reflecting on before the pandemic and, especially, after it.

Engraving is also present in this exhibition: we will see a dozen serigraphs that have their origin in an extensive photographic series, Study of Perspective. In it, this author captured his hand doing the comb in front of different centers of international power: he began in Tiananmen Square and then continued in the White House, the Eiffel Tower, the Reichstag… To transform these snapshots into these engravings, Weiwei redesigned with four or five colors, enlivening the result. The name of the project, in addition to reminding that it does not only have a political but also a plastic aspect, questions the perspective that could prevail before these pieces: that of Weiwei himself, that of the public or that that could be derived from the establishment prevailing.

Regarding his productions with LEGO, three can be highlighted: Illumination, May 3 and Don Quixote. The first is based on a selfie taken in Chengdu in 2009, while this author was participating in popular actions aimed at demanding transparency in the investigation of deaths caused by the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 (more than 5,000 schoolchildren lost their lives). The context of the image is important: Weiwei created this work when he had gone to that city to testify in favor of Tan Zuoren, an activist and writer detained for his involvement in the investigation into these events. At night, he was beaten by the police at the hotel and, when they were taking him out of the establishment, he captured the photo in the elevator.

The recreation of On May 3 Goya, in a very clear way, links past and current acts of domination and punishment; the face of one of those killed has been replaced with that of Weiwei. And finally, Don Quixote: his representation of the Cervantes figure is inspired by the one Picasso gave him in the weekly Les Lettres françaisesand Weiwei already noticed it on another occasion, when he made it his own in 1977 for a ceramic. In any case, it is a powerful reminder of the links between Chinese work and the written word.