A Chinese artist who study in America and has gone onto be a cultural and social activist in his home country. He helped design the birds nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics and then refused to attend as they demolished poor suburbs in preparation for surrounding sporting arenas. His initial inspiration to help is that he saw this contribution as a symbol of freedom for the Chinese people.
His father experienced great torture under the communist regime. He has taken it upon himself to being to light topics that are in the underground of Chinese culture and bring it to the foreground within his art. He has experienced great loss of freedom and physical harm in this process.
The Sichuan earthquake that killed 4900 children had such devastating effects due to the Chinese government cutting corners with the building supplies so the schools fell like chopsticks. He did an art installation of 4900 backpacks in Munich to symbolise this to not only the Chinese government but to the world.
He has painted a Ming dynasty vase with a coke symbols.
He has dropped a Ming dynasty vase and taken photos of the sequence.
All these symbolise for him "the past does not control me, your regime do not control me"
He uses twitter as a medium to project his political views and bring to light what the government does to hymn a regular basis. They tore down his new home as it was said to have been in align with their building codes and also fined him $1million dollars, the Chinese people in their droves sent money by mail and dropped money at his door. These are poor people but they gave him what they could and they raised the money for this fine.
He was also instrumental in the publishing of 3 art books that were sold in the black market, grey, white and black covers. This was works complied from a broad range of Chinese artists.
He was also responsible for a collection called Art & Dissent; in which he stood in front of landmarks and put his middle finger up and took photos of that. It was his way of saying F you to the Chinese government who are always the target of his political and social activism. His art is his expression of morality and is align with many Chinese, he is a brand for liberal thinking.
His movie; http://aiweiweineversorry.com/
His twitter address is; AWWNeverSorry
He is an amazing and brave man as well as very humble.
The backpack installations.
