Last night I was having dinner with my friend Amy and she told me she went to a premiere of an amazing documentary called Never Sorry. A film about Chinese artist Ai WeiWei. “You’ve never heard of him?!” She asked, so dubiously I said no and immediately went home to look him up and what I found was so inspiring.
Ai Wei Wei was born in Beijing and is a Chinese contemperary artist, political actibist, in addition to being a photographer, filmmamker, architect, and sculpture.
Born in 1957, Beijing, Ai Wei Wei’s work has been marked by a pursuit of honesty. Though he is famed for his tongue in cheek criticisms, his satires of traditional culture and his unending social responsibility, few remember that he began as first and foremost: as an artist. He studied at Parsons the New School of Design in NYC.
He is most known for his ‘Bird’s Nest,’ which was displayed at the Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. His role as an important political activist deepened, with his infamous probe of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake student deaths which lead to the closing of his blog.
What makes him so different and sets him apart to other modern artists is that he openly speaks out against the Chinese Government. Criticizing their stance on political, social, and economic standpoints.
