Midterm

Security Camera
Ai Weiwei, 2006
Sculpture

Forever Bicycles
Ai Weiwei, 2003
Sculpture

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese sculptor who was born in 1957 in Beijing, China. Many of his artworks were several of the same object that look like they were glued together to be in a certain position, for lack of a better way to put it. Ai has workers that help him make these sculptures because some of them are too difficult to put together for one person. He mentioned they sometimes think it is hard to make, but they eventually accept it. This video made me think differently about the way artists work because I thought artists would mostly be independent when creating, but it seems like Ai's workers are always ready to help him for any piece. Some of the materials he uses are actual objects and marble. Some of his works are political, but some are just personal things made for other reasons.
Ai's father, Ai Qing, was a famous poet, thus Ai believed that the reason he became so familiar with art was because of him. The reason he is interested in art is because he feels you are always dealing with new possibilities. His decision to become an artist was not serious, he said he did not have much of a choice when he started to make art. He believes you are either a non-artist, a person whose job is anything other than creating some type of art, or an artist. He calls himself an artist, but he did not consider himself one until late 2004 when he started doing shows because he did not have many works and he had nothing people seemingly appreciated.
Ai was arrested in 2011, and he was under surveillance for some time. What was surprising to me was that I would have expected him to be arrested for a work he produced, seeing as how some of his works are political and he lived in China for some time, because the Chinese government seems to be more strict than America's. However, he was arrested for alleged economic crimes. People call him a political activist because of his works, one example being Security Camera, created in 2006. The reason this sculpture is political is because a security camera's job is to watch, but with this sculpture that is made of marble, it turned into the one being watched, the exact opposite of what it was was meant to do. Its privacy is taken away just like the people a functioning security camera is in the direction of.
Ai said, "You need something people can realize is art," because people have told him, "What you're doing is too political, what are you doing, that's not art," and "You'll never get it." The people who have told him that do not seem to understand what art can be. Art can be anything, no matter how political or "wrong" it might look to others. Ai said that you have to say "I'm an artist, I can do this," so you can believe in yourself. There is a quote that I live by, that I feel is related to what Ai was saying at this moment. "You just have to be at peace with what you are and what you really want to be. A lot of people will say, 'I'm an aspiring artist' or 'I'm an aspiring writer'... No, you're a writer, you're an artist. If you're doing that shit every day, that's what you are... Just own it." (Leigh Daniel Avidan, 2013.) You need to believe what you are doing is correct. Art can never be wrong because there is no exact definition or laws of what art should be. If you truly believe what you are making is art, then you are an artist, because no one can ever tell you otherwise.