My meeting with Ai Weiwei in Beijing in the fall of 2010 was the starting point for our work on this exhibition. At the time Ai Weiwei had been under house arrest for a few days. He was calm but already then keenly aware of how precarious and unsafe his situation was. A lot has happened since then. In April 2011 Ai Weiwei was arrested on unclear charges and detained for three months in an undisclosed location. During the past year his situation has made him well-known far beyond the art world.

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing. At the end of the 1970s he co-founded the avant-garde artists’ group Stars. In 1983 he moved to New York where he joined the community of exiled Chinese artists, musicians and architects, and also became a part of the American intellectual and artistic scene. Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1993 and he has since become a prominent figure in contemporary Chinese art. In recent years his activism for social change in China has consumed more of his time and he has become one of the most outspoken critics of the regime. China’s development under the last century from empire to the socialist republic it is today with its singleparty rule, driven by a new capitalist spirit, has largely taken place at the cost of its citizens’ personal freedom. In reaction to this Ai Weiwei raises the issue of individual freedom and personal responsibility as the only way to a functioning and humane society.

Ai Weiwei’s artworks are often grounded within a Chinese context, yet they remain accessible to an international audience. His visual expression has both sensitivity and enormous power and he takes up subjects that are of concern even to us in Sweden. He likes to choose objects with great cultural or symbolic value for the Chinese and then deliberately treat them without the slightest regard for their worth. The artworks can be seen as commentary on the disdain that Mao’s Cultural Revolution showed the past as well as a way for Ai Weiwei himself to dispatch with conventional notions about art and its value.

Ai Weiwei alternates between the roles of artist, blogger, political activist, architect and curator. It is precisely this broad definition of his work that makes his art so fascinating and relevant today. The events of the past year have made it even more important to recognize Ai Weiwei’s activism and his commitment to freedom of speech and democratization in his country. For this reason we have set up a reading room within the exhibition space, making it possible for visitors to gain more insight into the artist’s socially-engaged work, which is the motivating force behind everything he does – be it an art installation, investigative documentary filmmaking or writing on his blog. Our programming will be in focus even more than usual during the spring season. Magasin 3 is organizing a series of talks about topics such as democracy, the preconditions for contemporary art in China, Internet and the role of the social media in the struggle for freedom of speech, and the impact that totalitarian regimes have on the arts. These events are arranged in collaboration with ABF, Bio Rio, Goethe Institut, Moderna Museet and Swedish PEN/Kulturhuset, Hotade ord.

Unfortunately, Ai Weiwei is not able to visit Stockholm in connection with his exhibition at Magasin 3. Since his release in June last year he has been forbidden to travel, to be active on the Internet or to speak to the media. To me this makes it all the more important to present Ai Weiwei in his first solo exhibition in Sweden and to continue making his voice heard.

Tessa Praun
Curator Magasin 3