Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995). Photograph: Ai Weiwei
The cavernous space of Tate Modern"s Turbine Hall has been lilliputian by a large spider, cleaved by a 167-metre crack and oven baked by an synthetic sun. Now, the art studio has announced, the space is to be filled by the majority politically brave commission yet.
Ai Weiwei is China"s majority important vital artist. Described by the New York Times as a "figure of Warholian celebrity" in Beijing, Ai is additionally an successful architect, a publisher, a restaurateur, a enthusiast and coach and an recurrent blogger (he is review by 10,000 people each day).
His informative status, however, unsuccessful to strengthen him last year when Chinese military detonate in to his road house room and kick him so really bad that surgeons in Munich after had to cavalcade dual holes in his head to remove 30ml of liquid from his skull.
The conflict was a greeting to Ai"s review in to the deaths of 5,250 young kids in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, an exploration that desirous Remembering 2009, a work done up of thousands of children"s backpacks.
His outspoken plea to the supervision over because so majority young kids died was, however, usually the ultimate in a array of provocative stances the artist has taken. He desirous Beijing"s Olympic track but afterwards refused to attend the opening ceremony. His critique of the supervision is fearless.
He acknowledges his activism could well see him pounded again and even jailed. But these are fates noticed with peacefulness by an artist who outlayed five of his infirm years in a dried work stay with his father, the Chinese producer Ai Qing.
"I roughly got killed," he certified after his Munich operation. "If it had been any some-more serious, I wouldn"t be here. The point is if you wish to have a point you are in danger. Whoever comes to this point will be crushed."
Ai is the 11th commission in the Tate"s Unilever Series, the majority renouned of open art installations in new years.
Vicente Todolí, executive of Tate Modern, pronounced Ai"s functions were "compelling" and "among the majority socially intent functions of art being done today".
"It will be stirring to see how he responds to the vast, open sourroundings of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern this October," he added.
Ai"s work, that usually proposed offered in 2004 when Switzerland hosted his initial exhibition, is characterised by the make use of of "readymade" Chinese antiquities to parody the complicated mania with possessions.
In 1995 he photographed himself ruinous a Han dynasty vessel (Dropping A Han Dynasty Urn). In 2006 he lonesome 39 neolithic vases with brightly phony paint (Coloured Vases). For Template 2007 he generated an synthetic charge that remade a tidy cut with a chisel comprising 1001 wooden doors and windows taken from broken Chinese buildings in to a twisted, crumpled mess.
"Everything is art. Everything is politics. You can call it art or non-art, I don"t give a damn," Ai has said.
As is regularly the case, the sum of the newest Tate commission will sojourn a poser until it is denounced on twelve Oct 2010. The muster will run until twenty-five Apr 2011.
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