Ai Weiwei was born during the Cultural Revolution in China of 1950s, he inherited a lot of his political knowledge from his father who was a poet called Ai Quig. Ai Quig was then later exiled with his family to re-education camps on the out reaches of a desert in 1958 for questioning government authority. After the Cultural Revolution, Chinese citizens were allowed to travel outside their borders again in 1970s. As a young man, the place that Ai Weiwei dreamed about going to was New York. He went to New York and was exposed to its western influences, its liberty and freedom of expression (Springford, 2011).Using photography Weiwei recorded and documented everything that inspired him. Weiwei visited galleries and art museums that exposed him to the world of conceptual art, becoming influenced by Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. Ai Weiwei admired the ways of artists who could simply proclaim what was art and what wasn’t art, how Duchamp questioned art and when something gets to be art (Springford, 2011).Ai Weiwei came back to China in 1993 to take care of his sick father, and found himself drawn to his responsibility as an artist, to take the task of re-awakening his country through his art and to expose his thoughts on the corrupt and controlling nature of China’s government (Philipson,2012). Ai Weiwei has always been an outspoken artist. In the course of his art making, Weiwei has used a form of activism in his art, with political ideologies that exist because of the Chinese government. He also uses a sense of memory and the countrys past and history. Most of his art involves the public and their outlook of the government. Weiwei requests engagement from the public as a show of protest in his artworks (Harris & Zucker, 2009). When...
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...mall town of Jingdezhen, the seeds were hand crafted and hand painted by local Chinese artisans in their workshops. Ai Weiwei employed these artisans to create these seeds from Jingdezhen’s finest porcelain which once provided porcelain to the Chinese imperial court. The work uses porcelain to symbolize one of China’s most historically prized exports. The seeds create a landscape of about 4 inches deep, and can crunch under foot, similar to a pebbled beach. The seeds could symbolize the multitude of the Chinese population, the element of mass production and the irony it holds by each seed being handmade. The sunflower seeds could symbolize the memory of poverty in China that was a result of the changes during the Cultural Revolution. It creates a sense of personal identity from the notion of using 100 billion individual seeds being individually made (Redzisz, 2011).
Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948 and grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when she was sent to the countryside to be “Re-educated” by the Maoist regime. She immigrated to the US in 1984 to
On February 25th, 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, via manual strangulation six weeks prior. Brutal right? So are false convictions. Adnan Syed did not murder Hae Min Lee nor did he have anything to do with her death. However, without a doubt, Jay Wilds, his alleged partner in crime, was involved.
There may been times when people have been treated unfairly, just because of their appearance or their social life.
Shi Huangdi now able to unite the warring states, explored ways to establish a stable, and long lasting dynasty. The improvements he made to a now unified China, changed they way the world looked upon the country.
“It was not easy to live in Shanghai” (Anyi 137). This line, echoed throughout Wang Anyi 's short piece “The Destination” is the glowing heartbeat of the story. A refrain filled with both longing and sadness, it hints at the many struggles faced by thousands upon thousands trying to get by in the city of Shanghai. One of these lost souls, the protagonist, Chen Xin, was one of the many youths taken from his family and sent to live the in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Ten years after the fact, Chen Xin views the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution internally and externally as he processes the changes that both he, and his hometown have over-gone in the past ten years. Devastatingly, he comes to the conclusion that there is no going back to the time of his childhood, and his fond memories of Shanghai exist solely in memory. This is in large part is due to the changes brought on by the Cultural Revolution. These effects of the Cultural Revolution are a central theme to the story; with repercussions seen on a cultural level, as well as a personal one.
Ah Xian born in Beijing in 1960 left china following the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, also known as tank man incident, and moved to Sydney Australia. Having moved from his native country, Ah Xian wanted his work to represent that “cultural identity is permanent and no matter what other places and influences one
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
“I don’t want to be part of this kind of denying reality. We live in this time. We have to speak out” (Klayman). Ai Weiwei is an internationally known Chinese artist as well as activist, and his motivation and determination can be summed up by this quote. In all of his pieces, Weiwei critically examines the social and administrative issues facing China today. Many of his works exhibit multiple themes that can be interpreted in various different ways. This lends itself to the universal appeal of his art and makes it a more effective medium of conveying his messages to viewers. Ai Weiwei’s activist artwork—and activist artwork in general—is important to society because it effectively forces the viewer to engage in a self-reflective process that makes the viewer critically examine his or her own beliefs and world. Nevertheless, censorship greatly hinders the dissemination of the critical and thought provoking messages of Ai Weiwei’s art and makes his artwork less effective. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship of Ai Weiwei’s activist art and the Communist Party’s subsequent censorship, I will examine Ai Weiwei’s influential childhood, his specific brand of activist artwork, the censorship of the Chinese government and the effects of censorship on the effectiveness of Ai Weiwei’s art.
Culture is defined as “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time” (Merriam-Webster). Around the world, each country has its own designated culture where people either honor or rebel against it. In China, the Chinese view their culture as different from many. Ai Weiwei, a Chinese activist born in 1957, is known as the most dangerous man to many in China. He is know to rebel against the Chinese culture, which brought many struggles upon him. Ai Weiwei’s cultural rebellion includes being very critical towards the Chinese government and being outspoken towards human rights. He “has [even] characterized his increasingly dangerous jousting with the Chinese government as a kind of performance art” (The New York Times). He communicates his messages through his blogs, social media accounts, and most importantly his artwork. Weiwei is well known for his Tate Exhibition with the porcelain sunflower seeds, his work with the Bird’s Nest Stadium in China, and the 2008 earthquake in China. Ai Weiwei both honors and criticizes his culture through his work with traditional urns, the Bird’s Nest Stadium, and sunflower seeds.
Art is a very important part of humanity’s history, and it can be found anywhere from the walls of caves to the halls of museums. The artists that created these works of art were influenced by a multitude of factors including personal issues, politics, and other art movements. Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh, two wildly popular artists, have left behind artwork, that to this day, influences and fascinates people around the world. Their painting styles and personal lives are vastly different, but both artists managed to capture the emotions that they were feeling and used them to create artwork.
Victor Chang was one of the greatest heart surgeons of all time and saved many lives with his many great surgical skills.
Zhang Huan’s performance piece, Seeds of Hamburg, was performed in 2002 in Hamburg, Germany. In the performance, Huan entered the wooden-chicken wire cage after being covered in honey and birdseed. Inside the cage, Huan moved around in various motions and 28 birds were released into the cage. Then Huan proceeds to sit on this throne-like structure constructed out of crates. After sitting on the throne structure for a while and allowing the birds to nibble from the birdseed on his body, a bird finally pulled a red ribbon from his mouth. The performance ended with Huan releasing the bird. This symbolic performance represents hope and the fearlessness to challenge authority.
When you think about Mathematicians, you think about rich and incalculably intelligent old people. What comes into my head is my Middle School’s mathematician who had a sharp nose, was extremely strict and surprisingly, not quite as old as we may rudely often think. The real definition of a Mathematician is a person with an extensive knowledge of mathematics who uses this knowledge in their work, normally to solve mathematical problems. One famous Mathematician, named Qin Jiushao along with many other mathematicians revolutionized the math world and helped create simpler methods with their mathematical knowledge.
Chinese art went through many different stages starting from the year 1842. But the massacre of Tiananmen Square in the year 1989 was a turning point in the political life of China and in the country's art. Until the year 1992 art in China was underground, but it kept expanding. As a result of that, some Chinese artists started to do art works that rebel against their government and express their feelings towards China. One of these artists is the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who expressed in each piece of art he did, his feelings that China should let its people break away from the rotten traditional, in order to express their thoughts freely.
This is expressed through the artists expression of the elderly woman 's haggard appearance. The exhausted expression in her face, how her attire is worn and hanging off her, the baskets she is carrying that clearly are almost dragging on the ground, and her poor posture. This elderly woman was of good socioeconomic status due to the ivy in her hair and her attire. Although despite her status and the fact that she was elderly she was haggard from a long day of working at the market place. The chickens and fruit represent life as it once was, from a more simpler time. The fact that she had to work in the marketplace to earn money was an indication of the changing times and desire for