Aiweiwei Humanity
Artist Ai Weiwei speaks powerfully about the global refugee crisis in his book Humanity.
人性
My conclusion is we are one humanity. If anyone is being hurt, we are all being hurt. If anyone has joy, that’s our joy.
ai weiwei, artist
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People around the world are inspired by Ai Weiwei's work and words, and are contributing their voices to the conversation.
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Media Gallery
Audio
Ai Weiwei in conversation with editor Larry Warsh: "Human behavior is always about our sensitivity and our knowledge.”
Interview
Katy Donoghue, Whitewall
I am honored to count Ai Weiwei among my most important friends. I learn so much from him and I am really in awe of his contribution to the art world and beyond. I was first introduced to Ai Weiwei in 2005, thanks to a mutual colleague in Beijing.
Review
Robin Pogrebin, New York Times
The prominent Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has long used his fame and social media as a megaphone for his activism. It was because of his blogging and Twitter activity criticizing the government that he was detained by the Chinese police for nearly three months and had his passport taken away in 2011. And his Instagram posts of the last few years have brought increasing international attention to the refugee crisis, as has his documentary
Human Flow, released last fall. But now Mr. Ai has returned to a more traditional form of expression: Humanity, a little blue book . . . that collects excerpts from Mr. Ai’s thoughts and aphorisms.
Review
Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star
In his book Humanity, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, takes us on a meditation of sorts, from understanding through to action, via a series of quotations he has given in various magazines, podcasts, etc., around the world. . . . The quotes are presented and organized by artist and longtime collaborator Larry Warsh, who also writes the introduction, starting with the question 'What is our human obligation?'
[Humanity offers a way ] to answer that question in light of current crises that are costing the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world. . . . Important reading.
Profile
Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Saturday Paper
The movie theatre is almost empty. In the gift shop, a woman wearing large rose quartz earrings, a Del Kathryn Barton scarf, and a thin gold watch finally decides on Humanity. Ai Weiwei’s appearance in the flesh feels as if it’s an apparition. Yellow-clear liquid falls neatly into each cup, steam swirling. Turn the camera on. Never turn it off. Make sure you have extra batteries. The line is cotton-thin. Ai runs a hand over his face. It is an artistic masterpiece: an intricate patchwork of stunning camera work, close-range iPhone portraits, and wide aerial landscape sweeps captured by drone – unflinching, apocalyptic, uncomfortable, exquisite, and very, very real.
Interview
Vanity Fair
What is the trait you most deplore in others? Insensitivity. Indifference about what is right or wrong. Indifference about justice.
Review
Dave Gilchrist, Socialist Worker
The book looks and reads like a series of short poems or Haiku. It is perhaps intended as an ironic parody of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. His topic headings consider humanity, crisis, power, borders and finally action. He looks at our human commonality and how that is plunged into disaster by the artificiality of partition and the misuse of power. Ai wants us to do something about it though, even if it’s only to speak up about the suffering of much of humanity. Here the contradictions of this now famous artist who has been accepted by the establishment can be seen.
Review
Peter Aspden, Financial Times
Ai Weiwei is the most important artist working in the most interesting country in the world right now. If he is finding it a burden, he hides it well. Notwithstanding a troubling spell in captivity last year, Ai refuses to be silenced. It is partly a matter of historical determinism: the world needs a prominent Chinese dissident around which to frame its reservations over that country's remarkable rise to power. For obvious reasons, that figure is unlikely to come from the worlds of business or politics. But Ai's resistance is also a matter of simple courage.
Review
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, The Independent
Publishing a book of quotations is, of course, a political act in itself. Weiwei-isms comes in a pocket-sized form with a simple black cover. It is deliberately the antithesis to the single most famous contemporary work to emerge from China: Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. But if Mao's book was Chinese Communist Party propaganda, Weiwei-isms is the opposite. Its very existence points a middle finger at the Party which has frequently tried to silence the artist.
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人性
Humanity
Writings on human life and the refugee crisis by the most important political artist of our time.
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.
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