On July 22, Ai Weiwei posted on Instagram a photo of his passport just returned after being confiscated for four years, a sanction which had extended the three months of arbitrary imprisonment inflicted in 2011 by the Chinese authorities. The plastic artist, who has stayed since this summer in Germany since then, has since become a real symbol of the artistic dissent of his country, supported by the largest international cultural institutions. It is in this context that the Royal Academy of Arts of London had decided to program this fall the first retrospective ever dedicated to its work in Great Britain; Prepared from a distance, she finally turned out to be also the first of the many events devoted to her in recent years, of which Ai Wewei has been able to supervise the installation and participate in the opening. More than ten days to make a detour by the British capital!

Dans la cour de la Royal Academy of Arts, deux jeunes enfants s’en donnent à cœur joie, courant à travers un étonnant bosquet avant d’entreprendre d’escalader un gros fauteuil en marbre noir. Leur aire de jeux improvisée est une monumentale installation – dernier opus de la série Tree (notre photo d’ouverture), débutée en 2009 – qui réunit huit arbres artificiels de plusieurs mètres de haut construits à l’aide de morceaux de bois mort – racines, troncs, branches – patiemment assemblés selon des techniques traditionnelles de charpenterie. « En Chine, les arbres sont vénérés en tant que représentants des morts sur la terre, ils font le lien entre le royaume céleste et les enfers, rappelle Adrian Locke, cocommissaire de l’exposition avec Tim Marlow, directeur artistique de la Royal Academy. Tree peut aussi évoquer la politique d’une seule Chine – pourtant composée de peuples d’origines ethniques variées – défendue par le pouvoir central afin de protéger et de promouvoir la souveraineté comme l’intégrité territoriale de la nation. » L’insolite canapé (Marble Couch, 2011) semble quant à lui inviter à prendre le temps d’une pause contemplative, bien que sa matière froide, même si luxueuse, en dissuade plus d’un ! Le bois comme le marbre – symbole de richesse et de pouvoir du temps des empereurs comme de celui de le Chine communiste –, mais aussi le jade et la porcelaine sont parmi les matériaux qu’affectionne particulièrement Ai Weiwei pour explorer l’histoire et l’héritage culturel de son pays ; pour dénoncer également ses travers avec cette liberté de ton qui lui a valu l’inimitié tenace des autorités chinoises.

Forty pieces invest the ten exhibition rooms of the prestigious London institution. All were carried out after 1993, the date of the artist's return-now 58 years old-in his country after twelve years spent in the United States-mainly in New York-; All with one exception, Hanging Man, a portrait made in 1985 from a wire hanger. The work echoes the turn taken by its artistic reflection during the 1980s, in contact with Western art, and more particularly of the thought of the inventor of Ready-Made. "Duchamp is the one who had the greatest influence on my practice," explains Ai Weiwei in an interview by Tim Marlow and published in the exhibition catalog. Using a hanger to draw your profile was my way of paying tribute to him. Just like his elder, the Chinese artist diverts everyday objects to develop some of his facilities, with the difference that these are often objects of a "overdue" daily life, in other words 'Antiquities: this is the case, for example, of stools dating from Qing dynasty (1644-1911), gathered in a joyful round and become "useless" in Grapes (2010), or terracotta vases made before J.- C. - Even in the Neolithic! - Bought on markets or from antique dealers and covered with industrial paint for Coloured Vases (2015). "Ai Weiwei is fully aware of the fact that the markets are full of counterfeits sold for originals, and that only experts are able to distinguish them," says Adrian Locke. What interests him is that you have to master the same know-how and traditions in both cases. The question of authenticity and, by extension, that of value is central in this work. »»

Because they testify to a real "understanding of the material" as a form of "balance between man and nature", Ai Weiwei has always been keen to highlight ancestral know-how and work In this spirit in close collaboration with a team of specialized craftsmen. A series of cubes and/or boxes one meter wide - as a nod of minimalism and conceptual art - in crystal, rosewood or tea, is a very beautiful illustration. Another most ambitious room: Fragments (2005) is a huge installation made up of remains of tables, chairs, beams and pillars from four old temples disassembled and rewarded by the authorities to make room for the construction of modern buildings ; A practice of the most common in this country with rampant urbanization. Seen from above, the whole, which seems to have its form at random and a fertile imagination, draws the contours of the China map - two stools nested one to the other and placed on the side representing Taiwan - : Invited to wander inside the room, the visitor has fun knowingly ignore borders. Further on, he plays the voyeurs by sliding an eye by small windows cut in six rectangular blocks (S.A.C.R.E.D., 2012), as many replicas on a 1/2 scale of the cell in which Ai Weiwei spent 81 days of April 3 at June 22, 2011. In each space, the artist has reproduced a scene - interrogation, meals, toilet, etc. - of his prison daily. "They had clearly suggested that I had more than ten years," he recalls. (...) But I had at least a reason for satisfaction: it was to have been able to express the bottom of my thought before finding myself in this situation. I didn’t have to regret having to stay there for a long time. On the wall, a wallpaper interspersed with aesthetic force of golden patterns composed of handcuffs, video-surveillance cameras and the little twitter bird, on the throat of which the bearded face of the artist takes shape, as if to remember how much He has appropriated over the years the space of freedom and expression offered by the social network. "Online communication is for me a form of poetry, even manifesto: this distinctly reflects your state of mind and you can communicate with extreme precision; Obviously, nothing assures you, however, that you will be understood, but it is at least a form of expression. »»

The incarceration of AI Weiwei in 2011 intervened at the end of several years of increasing tensions with the authorities, who took a new round in 2008, the year of the earthquake in Sichuan, in southwest China, which will be nearly 90,000 dead and missing. At the Royal Academy of Arts, a whole room, the largest in the institution, is dedicated to the drama that has become a subject of commitment to the artist as for the activist. The imposing mass of Straight (2008-2012) covers the ground twelve meters long and six wide; The work consists of 150 tonnes of steel bars, all clandestinely recovered - then rectified manually - at the scene of the disaster, and more particularly in the rubble of the numerous schools victims of construction defects, consequences denounced of the corruption of Locally elected. On both sides of the installation, the names, birth dates, classes and sexes of more than 5,000 pupils and students killed on May 12, 2008 succeed one another, in Chinese and in English, on large wall panels. A set of photographs and a video complete the proposal. "Artists are people who devote their lives to feeling the world, understanding it," says Ai Weiwei. By doing this, perhaps they help somewhat help everyone in their own understanding of the world. I think people should apprehend part of life through art, by achieving things, and that artistic practice is inseparable from life. Like freedom of speech. In one of the windows making up the last room of the exhibition, a porcelain puzzle with floral patterns represents China, on each "piece" two ideograms claim freedom of expression (Free Speech Puzzle, 2014); In another, Remains (2015) brings together thirteen elements of a completely different type of porcelain, faithful reproductions of pieces of human bones found in the soil of an old labor camp. The room is lined with another ephemeral wallpaper, swarming with thousands of arms with as many fingers of honor.

En décembre 2010, l’Université des Arts de Berlin avait formulé le projet de créer un poste de professeur invité à l’attention d’Ai Weiwei. La proposition avait été validée quelques mois plus tard, après son arrestation. Il y a quatre semaines, l’artiste chinois a officiellement pris ses fonctions dans la capitale allemande, un visa de séjour de trois ans en poche. Plus d’une centaine d’étudiants en design, mode, film et photographie ont passé un entretien avec lui dans l’espoir de suivre ses cours. Une quinzaine d’entre eux ont été retenus. Interrogé sur ses critères de sélection lors d’une discussion publique organisée le dimanche 1^er novembre par l’université, Ai Weiwei a précisé avoir écarté les personnes pour lesquelles « l’art est un but et non un moyen » et s’être laissé guider par une forme d’« égoïsme », l’envie de simplement « passer un bon moment ensemble ». Une mission temporaire qu’il n’entend pas transformer en exil. Interviewé début août par le quotidien allemand Süddeutsche Zeitung sur l’état de ses rapports avec les autorités chinoises, il avait précisé avoir l’intention de retourner dans son pays : « Ils m’ont promis que je pourrais revenir, ce qui est très important pour moi, avait-il précisé. Mais je n’ai pas la main là-dessus. »

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