Ai Wei Wei, Arch Installation in Stockholm, ETC.
(Ai Weiwei’s Arch Installation Opens in Central Stockholm)
The artwork was last seen in 2017 in New York, under the arch of the Washington Square Monument, as part of the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors installation. According to the artist, when the piece was first shown, it was about racism and the global refugee crisis caused by regional insecurity. Since then, the artwork has taken on new meanings, just as more crises and conflicts unfurl, like the collective isolation and vulnerability experienced during the pandemic, and more recently, the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Interview via Inews UK Rwanda Asylum Policy Racism
Books that inspire Ai-Wei-Wei
Existentialism Is a Humanism – Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)
The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx (1848)
The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (c. 11th – 7th Centuries BC)
Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (1973)
The Classic of Mountains and Seas (c. 4th Century BC)
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism – Vladimir Lenin (1917)
Gypsy Romance – Federico Garcia Lorca (1928)
Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain (1883)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) – Andy Warhol (1975)
Permanent Record – Edward Snowden (2019)
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman (1855)
The Trial – Franz Kafka (1925)
Tao Te Ching – Laozi (c. 4th Century BC)
Philosophical Investigations – Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking (1988)
Heavenly Questions – Qu Yuan (c. 475 – 221 BC)