Over the past two years, Ai Weiwei has focused her work on defending the human rights of refugees and documenting their displacement and tragic condition. The artist continues to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis with a monumental exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague. “Law of Travel” unveils a series of Weiwei projects dedicated to his stay in refugee camps on the Greek island. The exhibition “Law of Travel” takes place in the Prague Exhibition Centre as a multi-layered statement on human existence. In the huge main hall, a huge inflatable boat hangs from the ceiling and floats in the gallery`s cathedral-shaped post-industrial hall. The crowded raft carries a compressed mass of figures apparently destined for a journey through the unknown. Through this gesture of reconstructing a desperate act of flight, Ai Weiwei seeks to pay homage to the human tragedy of the present moment and to underscore man`s desire for a sense of belonging. “Law of the Journey” is a huge rubber dinghy hanging from the ceiling that Ai Weiwei, a famous Chinese artist and activist, has just completed and whose largest installation to date seems to be The Law of Travel. The work, the depiction of a 230-foot-long black rubber dinghy, is a clear account of the conditions in which refugees are forced to face their travels. Ai Weiwei, who spent more than 40 days in refugee camps this year, wanted to portray his 250 faceless refugees, as if each of them were one of us. The demand for the artist`s work, which increased after his passport returned in 2015, meant that Ai`s real-life experiences were invariably incorporated into his museum exhibitions. The freedom to travel freely does not seem to have escaped the attention of the artist, who says that although he is “still in a state of exile of my nation,” he continues to work to create works that tell the truth to the experiences of those who “disappear in search of freedom, security, some kind of protection and compassion.” The exhibition also features a selection of Ai Weiwei`s earlier works: “Laundromat”, a monumental exhibition of carefully hung clothes, carefully arranged shoes and precisely folded blankets collected by the artist in an informal refugee camp in Idomeni; and “Snake Ceiling”, a monument dedicated to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in a severe earthquake in China in 2008.
The Law of the Journey exhibition is Ai Weiwei`s epic multi-layered statement about human existence: an artistic expression of empathy and moral concern in the face of continuous and uncontrolled destruction and carnage. Housed in a building with a symbolic historical charge – a former trade fair palace from 1928, which served as a gathering point for Jews before their deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp from 1939 to 1941 – it functions as a site-specific parable, as a form of (public) discourse that carries a transgressive power of cathartic experience, but also a rhetoric of failure. Paradox and resignation. Like Noah`s Ark, a monumental rubber dinghy is a contemporary ship of forced exodus that floats desperately in the immense oceanic abyss of the gallery`s great post-industrial hall and cathedral. On a journey through the unknown and the infinite, an overcrowded life raft carries “the vanguard of its people,” as Hannah Arendt described illegals and stateless people in her groundbreaking 1943 essay, We Refugees: More than 300 characters stuck within the confines of temporary accommodation take a journey “far into the unseasoned” and flee violence and danger. Law of Travel / Ai Weiwei 17 March 2017 – 7 January 2018 / National Gallery Prague Curated by Jiří Fajt & Adam Budak Please visit the exhibition page > Ai`s feature-length documentary Human Flow, 2017, will also premiere in Sydney as part of the Biennale programme. The film traces the global refugee crisis through footage and interviews shot in more than 23 countries, including Greece, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sweden and Italy. Human Flow articulates the massive scale of migration while focusing on some of the individual experiences of refugees, humanizing a crisis of almost incomprehensible proportions. With this radical gesture of reconstructing an act of desperate distress as a counter-beautification of a humanity in decline, Ai Weiwei pays tribute to the human tragedy of the present moment, as well as to humanity`s eternal desire to be at home and a sense of belonging. The Law of Travel is a call to action and condemns the ignorance and blindness of the political and civil apparatus. The title of the exhibition alludes to Walter Benjamin`s reading of Franz Kafka`s Law of Travel as “a path of unexpected reversals and distortions that disrupt the random connections between origins and goals, desires and accomplishments, the proclamation of messages and their reception.” Crystal Ball, 2017, exhibited at Artspace, is a sculptural installation consisting of a large glass ball surrounded by a nest of life jackets. A crystal ball or orbuculum associated with clairvoyance and clairvoyance is supposed to show images that predict the future.
Ai`s crystal ball reveals an inverted world; A chaotic reality in which millions of people have been forced to leave their homes to escape war and conflict whose future is now uncertain. For the 21st Sydney Biennale, Ai presents a series of interconnected works in multiple locations. In the Cockatoo Island Industrial Zone, Ai`s Travel Law, 2017, makes an impressive statement. With a 60-metre-long boat overcrowded with hundreds of unnamed refugees, the work focuses heavily on the monumental scale of the humanitarian crisis. The rubber dinghy and figurines are made of black rubber and made in a Chinese factory that also manufactures the precarious ships used by thousands of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean. Accompanying Law of the Journey is a wallpaper with photos taken by Ai on an iPhone while she was filming the documentary Human Flow, 2017. As part of the installation, four video works can also be seen. Filmed over several days, At Sea, 2016, features crowded inflatable rafts carrying a steady flow of people to the coast of the Greek island.
In On the Boat, 2016, Ai stands alone on a partially submerged inflatable ship discovered floating in the Mediterranean, the fate of her passengers being unknown. Floating, 2016, shows images of the same raft left to the seemingly limitless vastness of the ocean. Ai Weiwei Drifting, 2017, is a documentary that follows Ai for a year as he creates a series of works focused on the refugee crisis. “There is no refugee crisis, only a human crisis. In dealing with refugees, we have lost our core values,” says Ai Weiwei. “In this time of uncertainty, we need more tolerance, compassion and trust in each other because we are all one. Otherwise, humanity will face an even greater crisis. Significantly, the corpses are scattered around the boat. The soldiers who fell during the difficult crossing, some who have already passed, others who get to safety – they remind us how dangerous these journeys can be. Visitors to the National Gallery in Prague discover a moving and stimulating piece. A huge 230-foot boat that floats in the air and contains more than 300 dark, faceless figures.
All crammed together, the children in the middle for extra protection. A few characters lie under the boat, their journey ended prematurely. “In this time of uncertainty, we need more tolerance, compassion and trust in each other, because we are all one,” Ai Weiwei continued. Another work of art, Laundromat (2016), features clothes from refugee camps in the style of an ordinary clothing store, with items carefully placed on shelves as if waiting for customers. Other installations include Snake Ceiling (2009), a tribute to the 5,000 children who lost their lives in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, With Flowers (2013-2015) and Travelling Light (2007), a large chandelier anchored on a Ming Dynasty column. Ai has received a number of prestigious international awards, including the Human Rights Foundation`s Václav Havel Award for Creative Dissent in 2012, the Association of Evaluators` Artistic Excellence Award in 2013 and Amnesty International`s Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2015. Ai`s major solo exhibitions have taken place around the world, including Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (2016), the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2015), the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2014), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC (2012) and the Tate Modern in London (2010). During the period 2015-2017, a number of projects related to the international refugee situation were carried out, which were exhibited in Athens, Berlin, Vienna, Florence and New York.
Arguably the most famous Chinese artist alive today, much of Ai Weiwei`s work exists in the space between art and activism, often blurring the lines between the two. Politically outspoken and an avid social media user, Ai creates works rich in symbolism and metaphors that draw attention to social injustice.
