Conversations

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines of the migrant crisis, how to make art, and technology as a tool for freedom or oppression. Ai opens up about his relationship to his father as a poet and as a dissident forced into hard labor in a small village after the Cultural Revolution. He shares his thoughts on formal education and the importance of finding your own way as an artist. New York--both the city and its people--were formative for Ai Weiwei, and he speaks eloquently about how these experiences continue to influence him. Ai conjures up scenes from his long relationship with the city: dropping out of Parsons School of Design because he couldn't afford tuition, making portraits in Washington Square Park as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s, taking photos for the New York Times at demonstrations in Tompkins Square Park, and returning to set up the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors project across the city. These candid, spontaneous conversations reveal why Ai Weiwei has become such a major force in contemporary art and political life.

Arts & Photography

WEIWEI, Ai

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

An autobiography in pictures: photographs taken by Ai Weiwei that capture his emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today.
Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs 1993–2003 is an autobiography in pictures. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of Chinese citizens. 
This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China than this.
The book contains more than 600 carefully sequenced images culled from an archive of more than 40,000 photographs taken by Ai: a narrative arc carefully shaped by an artist keenly aware of photography's ability to tell stories. It includes a shattering series of photographs taken between 1993 and 1996 devoted to the final illness and death of Ai's father Ai Qing. The book is a sequel to Ai Weiwei: New York 1983–1993, a privately published book that collected photographs taken by Ai during his years on the New York art scene.

Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs, 1993-2003 (Mit Press)

Tancock, John

Tung, Stephanie H.

The MIT Press

A richly illustrated exploration of Ai Weiwei's installation and architecture projects, focusing on the artist's use of space.
Outspoken, provocative, and prolific, the artist Ai Weiwei is an international phenomenon. In recent years, he has produced an astonishingly varied body of work while continuing his role as activist, provocateur, and conscience of a nation. Ai Weiwei is under “city arrest” in Beijing after an 81-day imprisonment; he is accused of tax evasion, but many suspect he is being punished for his political activism, including his exposure of shoddy school building practices that led to the deaths of thousands of children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2009, he was badly beaten by the police during his earthquake investigations.
Ai Weiwei's work reflects his multiple artistic identities as conceptual artist, architect, filmmaker, designer, curator, writer, and publisher. This monumental volume, developed in association with the artist, draws on the full breadth of Ai Weiwei's architectural, installation, and activist work, with a focus on his use of space. It documents a huge range of international projects with drawings, plans, and photographs of finished work. It also includes excerpts from Ai Weiwei's famous blog (shut down by Chinese authorities in 2009), in which he offers pithy and scathing commentary on the world around him. Essays by leading critics and art historians and interviews with the artist, drawing out his central concerns, accompany the 450 beautifully reproduced color illustrations of his work.

Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters - Art Architecture and Activism

1000 YEARS OF JOYS AND SORROWS

Crown Publishing Group

The quotable Ai Weiwei This collection of quotes demonstrates the elegant simplicity of Ai Weiwei's thoughts on key aspects of his art, politics, and life. A master at communicating powerful ideas in astonishingly few words, Ai Weiwei is known for his innovative use of social media to disseminate his views. The short quotations presented here have been carefully selected from articles, tweets, and interviews given by this acclaimed Chinese artist and activist. The book is organized into six categories: freedom of expression; art and activism; government, power, and moral choices; the digital world; history, the historical moment, and the future; and personal reflections.
Together, these quotes span some of the most revealing moments of Ai Weiwei's eventful career―from his risky investigation into student deaths in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to his arbitrary arrest in 2011―providing a window into the mind of one of the world's most electrifying and courageous contemporary artists.
Select Quotes from the Book:
On Freedom of Expression
<ul>
<li>"Say what you need to say plainly, and then take responsibility for it."</li>
<li>"A small act is worth a million thoughts."</li>
<li>"Liberty is about our rights to question everything."</li>
</ul>On Art and Activism <ul>
<li>"Everything is art. Everything is politics."</li>
<li>"The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay."</li>
<li>"Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don't feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy."</li>
</ul>On Government, Power, and Making Moral Choice <ul>
<li>"Once you've tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country."</li>
<li>"I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won't cost me much."</li>
<li>"Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice."</li>
</ul>On the Digital World <ul>
<li>"Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true."</li>
<li>"The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that."</li>
<li>"The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China."</li>
</ul>On History, the Historical Moment, and the Future <ul>
<li>"If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future."</li>
<li>"We need to get out of the old language."</li>
<li>"The world is a sphere, there is no East or West."</li>
</ul>Personal Reflection <ul>
<li>"I've never planned any part of my career―except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom."</li>
<li>"Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom."</li>
<li>"Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it."</li>
</ul>

Weiwei-isms

Individual Artists

Princeton University Press

Writings on human life and the refugee crisis by the most important political artist of our time
Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is widely known as an artist across media: sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and architecture. He is also one of the world's most important artist-activists and a powerful documentary filmmaker. His work and art call attention to attacks on democracy and free speech, abuses of human rights, and human displacement--often on an epic, international scale.
This collection of quotations demonstrates the range of Ai Weiwei's thinking on humanity and mass migration, issues that have occupied him for decades. Selected from articles, interviews, and conversations, Ai Weiwei's words speak to the profound urgency of the global refugee crisis, the resilience and vulnerability of the human condition, and the role of art in providing a voice for the voiceless.
Select quotations from the book:
"This problem has such a long history, a human history. We are all refugees somehow, somewhere, and at some moment."
"Allowing borders to determine your thinking is incompatible with the modern era."
"Art is about aesthetics, about morals, about our beliefs in humanity. Without that there is simply no art."
"I don't care what all people think. My work belongs to the people who have no voice."

Humanity (ISMs)

A powerful portrait of the greatest humanitarian emergency of our time, from the director of Human Flow In the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees, aid workers, politicians, activists, doctors, and local authorities in twenty-three countries around the world. A handful of those interviews were included in the film. This book presents one hundred of these conversations in their entirety, providing compelling first-person stories of the lives of those affected by the crisis and those on the front lines of working to address its immense challenges. Speaking in their own words, refugees give voice to their experiences of migrating across borders, living in refugee camps, and struggling to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings. They talk about the dire circumstances that drove them to migrate, whether war, famine, or persecution; and their hopes and fears for the future. A wide range of related voices provides context for the historical evolution of this crisis, the challenges for regions and states, and the options for moving forward. Complete with photographs taken by Ai Weiwei while filming Human Flow, this book provides a powerful, personal, and moving account of the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time.

Human Flow: Stories from the Global Refugee Crisis

The most complete monograph dedicated to the work of Michael Maltzan and his Los Angeles-based architecture practice, this book presents 16 of Maltzan's most recent projects with full-color photographs, drawings and plans. Maltzan is an architect who deals with the realities of urban landscape through the manipulation of ground, circulation and perception. Among his best-known projects is MoMA QNS, Maltzan's reworking of a former factory into a temporary accommodation for the Museum of Modern Art, which opened in Queens, New York, in June 2002. Projects currently in design or under construction include several innovative residences in California, the Fresno Metropolitan Museum and Kidspace Children's Museum, Pasadena, which was selected for the 2002 Venice Biennale International Exhibition of Architecture. Maltzan is quickly gaining increasing international recognition for his work, with projects in China, Canada and Milan.

Michael Maltzan: Alternate Ground (CARNEGIE MUSEUM)

Ryan, Raymund

Armstrong, Richard

Architecture

Carnegie Museum Of Art

Ai Weiwei 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Vintage) /anglais

Penguin Uk

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by WEIWEI, Ai. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by WEIWEI, Ai

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by WEIWEI, Ai. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Conversations

Conversations

Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs, 1993-2003 (Mit Press)

Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters - Art Architecture and Activism

1000 YEARS OF JOYS AND SORROWS

Weiwei-isms

Humanity (ISMs)

Human Flow: Stories from the Global Refugee Crisis

Michael Maltzan: Alternate Ground (CARNEGIE MUSEUM)

Ai Weiwei 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Vintage) /anglais