Ai Weiwei is a chinese artist whose work expresses his passion and worry about China and its politics and he has been recognised as "a Beijing Andy Warhol."
In a lot of his work he chooses to express his displeasure with the chinese government using subversion. For example, his art piece titled "Remembering" is about the tragic deaths of thousands of school children in China in the Sichuan area during the 2008 earthquake. Ai Weiwei made this piece out of school backpacks because there were thousands scattered on the floor after the earthquake. The message in chinese says "She lived happily for seven
years in this world" which is a quote from a mother of one of the children who died.
Ai Weiwei also decided to investigate in to the "shoddy" construction of the school buildings by the chinese government. After the government heard of this, on April 3rd 2011 Ai Weiwei was arrested and is brutally beaten by chinese police and needed emergency brain surgery.
Another piece of work Ai Weiwei has made with a subversive message about chinese oppression and lack of human rights in China is the "Sunflower Seeds". This was made up of 100 million hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds painted by 1,600 chinese artisans in the town of Jingdezhen. Ai Weiwei encouraged people who visited the exhibit in the tate modern to walk on the seeds and even roll and lay down in them in order to experience the ideas of the effect of mass consumption on Chinese industry and 20th-century China's history of famine and collective work.
In conclusion I consider Ai Weiwei to be a very brave and ambitious artist who is using his creativity for a very good cause and has sacrificed a lot in order to make his work. I feel as though he could be an inspiration for me in the future when working with subversive messages.
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