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More is always better. That seems to be the working philosophy of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese superstar artist, who will be taking over Los Angeles this fall with not one, but three exhibitions simultaneously on view throughout the city. The opening of Ai’s show at the Marciano Art Foundation on September 28 will be followed just a day later by his opening at Jeffrey Deitch’s new space in Hollywood, that gallery’s inaugural show. A week later, UTA Artist Space (run by United Talent Agency) will open a third exhibition of Ai’s work in their new Beverly Hills iteration. Though these anticipated presentations of his work have garnered some media notice, it’s been mostly about the unusual occurrence of an artist exhibiting this much in one city at one time. OBSERVER http://observer.com/2018/05/ai-weiwei-and-overexposure-3-concurrent-la-exhibitions-fall-2018/

AI WEIWEI'S LAUNDROMAT (2016) Why did you decide to wash their belongings? I don’t like to see them dirty. No matter how poor we were, my mom would say, ‘Wash your hands.’ So, for me, it’s human dignity to be clean. So basic.

How can racks of clothes bring more attention to refugees? The migrants are there but they’re not there. These clothes are existing, something you can touch. I grew up in a similar condition. I would wear a shoe worn by my brother. It was often too big, but I would wear it. It’s better than no shoes. My father used his ties as a belt because he didn’t have a belt. When he was doing hard labor in the winter, he would open up the tie to wrap on his feet because he had no socks and they were so cold.

Why have you become so consumed with this issue? It’s really a challenge when you see these people — it’s too big, too many — like an open wound. It’s not a problem that can be easily solved. You have generations of people who have no education and who see how the world has treated them. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/arts/design/ai-weiwei-melds-art-and-activism-in-shows-about-displacement.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

One of the interview questions by the Art Newspaper: You’ve recently had shows in Israel, Turkey and, now, Qatar, which are all countries that have been criticised for their crackdowns on human rights and freedom of speech. As an artist who has spent his life campaigning against a country that denies people human rights, how do you feel about exhibiting in such countries?
We have two kinds of societies: one society has human rights and freedom of speech but where an individual’s voices is not taken seriously, such as in Europe and the US. They still have strong human rights and freedom of speech problems, just at different levels. Then you have states where these rights cannot be protected, like in Turkey or Israel or some Gulf states. But still, I think human rights is one quality—it belongs to everyone and everywhere, so to defend human rights anywhere is to defend them everywhere. We have to separate the idea of state and territory and just talk about the issues: about the human condition and freedom of speech. Art can avoid this cold war thinking of these original ideologies and talk about common values and humanity in a much broader sense. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/ai-weiwei-on-his-qatar-show

Ai Weiwei 'Law of the Journey', 2017. Quite a few big guns of the contemporary art world will be heading to Sydney next March, but few bigger than Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who'll be presenting two sculptures, a feature length film and deliver a keynote address.

He'll be bringing a 60-metre inflatable boat filled with 250 larger-than-life refugee figures to Cockatoo Island. The work is called Law of the Journey, and is made of the same black rubber used to make the vessels that carry refugees across the Aegean Sea. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timeout.com/sydney/news/ai-weiwei-is-taking-over-the-sydney-biennale-with-a-massive-inflatable-sculpture-121317/amp

Ai Weiwei 'Law of the Journey', 2017

Designed by Swiss studio HHF Architects and Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, the Tsai Residence was designed as a weekend home for an art collector couple who wanted a gallery space for their large paintings.
Sited on the highest point of a large, elevated plot in the town of Ancram, New York, the 4,000-square-foot residence appears as a simple abstract figure composed of four rectangular structures.
These simple, timber-frame buildings are clad in corrugated galvanized iron on the outside, and gypsum panels on the inside.
The horizontal edges of the corrugated iron sheets overlap to articulate the house’s structure, creating vertical pockets of glazed openings where natural light shines through to illuminate the interiors and artwork hanging on the walls.
https://www.dwell.com/article/ai-weiwei-and-hhf-architects-create-a-rural-retreat-for-two-art-collectors-4fe704c8

Ai said that he initially struggled with mounting such a monumental show in a city that was close to his heart. “I was quite hesitant because it’s a city I love so much,” he explained. “It’s not easy for me to just put a simple sculpture in the city. I have to do something to pay back my respect, my love.”
That love traces back to the decade the artist spent in New York, between 1982 and 1993, during which time he lived in the East Village and the Lower East Side, enrolled at Parsons and the Art Students League, and took a huge number of photographs. Ai said it was difficult to live in the city, but even so, recalled it as the place where every young artist wanted to be. “I learned so much from this city,” he said. “[In] this city you never feel you are a foreigner,” Ai continued. “New York is great only because New York is mixed; there’s people from everywhere, and they are so passionate.”
He felt the refugee crisis was a fitting topic through which to engage a New York audience, particularly now. The city’s vital immigrant communities certainly inspired a great deal of the exhibition. But so, too, have nationalist and anti-immigrant policies that have become pervasive across the country—namely the current administration’s “travel ban,” and the nationalist movements that have gained steam in United States and across western Europe.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ai-weiwei-installs-fences-new-york-making-locals-face-refugee-crisis/amp

5 48 E 7th St
It’s no oversight that many of the project’s installations are clustered in the East Village and Lower East Side. The neighborhoods have historically been a landing pad for new immigrants. Ai himself lived here, in a basement apartment at 48 East 7th Street, when he was a student and immigrant in the 1980s. The installation here will occupy the space between two buildings. https://ny.curbed.com/maps/ai-weiwei-good-fences-make-good-neighbors-location-map

Ai took a democratic approach to mapping out the show, placing works where they could be experienced by a wide swath of New Yorkers, along public transport routes and in city parks. And he’s taken the concept of the fence and stretched its meaning, so as to integrate “fences” into the city, allowing people to see or interact with them, without impeding foot traffic. This includes a series of 10 pale grey sculptures that wrap around bus shelters, which simultaneously obscure the transparent glass structure, and offer a small bench for seating. Meanwhile, 100 posters fill spaces normally used for advertisements with documentary images, statistics, or poetry pertaining to Human Flow and the refugee crisis. Ai has also adorned lampposts around the city with elegant, perforated vinyl banners that feature the portraits of real and historic refugees. Ai Weiwei, Circle Fence, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Timothy Schneck, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY. On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017 - February 11, 2018.

Together, these elements draw attention not only to the global refugee crisis, which has seen over 65 million people displaced in recent years, but also to the problematic function of fences today, both the physical and metaphorical kind—from border walls to discriminatory policy. “Fences or territories always relate to our identity, and also our understanding of ourselves and our attitudes towards others,” Ai said, addressing press at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, the site of a towering circular fence resembling a giant golden birdcage.
“We are living at a time where there’s no tolerance, we’re divided,” Ai noted, “and they try to separate us by colors, race, religion, nationality, which I think is completely going backwards—against freedom, humanity, understanding of our time.”
Ai certainly knows of what he speaks. As a child he lived in exile after his family was forced to leave Beijing due to his poet father’s “rightist” politics. After achieving later renown for activist artworks that advocated for human rights and freedom of speech in China, Ai was infamously detained in 2011 and had his passport revoked. In 2015, upon having his travel documents returned to him, he moved to Berlin and set up a studio there, and began to focus his practice on the plight of refugees. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ai-weiwei-installs-fences-new-york-making-locals-face-refugee-crisis/amp

It was a Tuesday in Midtown, and the Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei was standing in front of a giant, golden cage as tall as a palm tree. “Gilded Cage,” one aspect of Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, the artist’s new public exhibition, is eponymous: an ornate golden coop festooned with turnstiles and an open ceiling, at once claustrophobic, contemplative, and breathtaking. Speaking to a bevy of reporters thanks to the New York institution Public Art Fund, which had brought him for the occasion, Weiwei was characteristically calm and collected, almost blasé about the spectacle being held for him. “Fences or territory always relate to art, and also identity, and also understanding ourselves and our activity toward others,” he told us. “And in this time, they are of globalization, the economic, political landscape changed dramatically. But the fences and the territory became an even more urgent topic for everyone to be conscious and notice.” Borders themselves are arbitrary and imaginary—just ask MIA. Fences are decidedly less so. Fences enforce the division in a real, physical way, enforcing an otherness as they exclude and insulate...https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spin.com/2017/10/ai-weiwei-good-fences-make-good-neighbors-review%3Famp%3D1

It was a Tuesday in Midtown, and the Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei was standing in front of a giant, golden cage as tall as a palm tree. “Gilded Cage,” one aspect of Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, the artist’s new public exhibition, is eponymous: an ornate golden coop festooned with turnstiles and an open ceiling, at once claustrophobic, contemplative, and breathtaking. Speaking to a bevy of reporters thanks to the New York institution Public Art Fund, which had brought him for the occasion, Weiwei was characteristically calm and collected, almost blasé about the spectacle being held for him. “Fences or territory always relate to art, and also identity, and also understanding ourselves and our activity toward others,” he told us. “And in this time, they are of globalization, the economic, political landscape changed dramatically. But the fences and the territory became an even more urgent topic for everyone to be conscious and notice.” Borders themselves are arbitrary and imaginary—just ask MIA. Fences are decidedly less so. Fences enforce the division in a real, physical way, enforcing an otherness as they exclude and insulate...https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spin.com/2017/10/ai-weiwei-good-fences-make-good-neighbors-review%3Famp%3D1

It was a Tuesday in Midtown, and the Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei was standing in front of a giant, golden cage as tall as a palm tree. “Gilded Cage,” one aspect of Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, the artist’s new public exhibition, is eponymous: an ornate golden coop festooned with turnstiles and an open ceiling, at once claustrophobic, contemplative, and breathtaking. Speaking to a bevy of reporters thanks to the New York institution Public Art Fund, which had brought him for the occasion, Weiwei was characteristically calm and collected, almost blasé about the spectacle being held for him. “Fences or territory always relate to art, and also identity, and also understanding ourselves and our activity toward others,” he told us. “And in this time, they are of globalization, the economic, political landscape changed dramatically. But the fences and the territory became an even more urgent topic for everyone to be conscious and notice.” Borders themselves are arbitrary and imaginary—just ask MIA. Fences are decidedly less so. Fences enforce the division in a real, physical way, enforcing an otherness as they exclude and insulate...https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spin.com/2017/10/ai-weiwei-good-fences-make-good-neighbors-review%3Famp%3D1

Ai Weiwei conceived this multi-site, multi-media exhibition for public spaces, monuments, buildings, transportation sites, and advertising platforms throughout New York City. Collectively, these elements comprise a passionate response to the global migration crisis and a reflection on the profound social and political impulse to divide people from each other. For Ai, these themes have deep roots. He experienced exile with his family as a child, life as an immigrant and art student in New York, and more recently, brutal repression as an artist and activist in China. The exhibition draws on many aspects of Ai’s career as a visual artist and architect, and is informed by both his own life experience and the plight of displaced people. In 2016, Ai and his team traveled to 23 countries and more than 40 refugee camps while filming his documentary, Human Flow. https://www.publicartfund.org/ai_weiwei_good_fences_make_good_neighbors/about