The Phoenix Art Museum debuted the traveling global exhibit Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads: Gold on Friday, Oct. 3. The museum will display this sculpture series by the controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei until Jan. 31.
This exhibit consists of 12 gold-plated sculptures, each depicting the head of an animal in the Chinese zodiac. The Phoenix Art Museum is distinguishing its display from other museums’ iterations of the exhibit by including its own collection of 18th-century bronze works to be displayed alongside the heads, as well as a few modern touches: a projection of the artist’s live Twitter feed, a video of the sculpture casting process and an Ai Weiwei portrait made of Lego bricks.
Other features of the exhibit added by the Phoenix Art Museum include the ability to find out your own zodiac sign and the opportunity to take selfies with the sculptures — the exhibit is open for photos, unlike many traveling exhibits in the museum.
This series of sculptures is a reimagining of a set of twelve bronze zodiac heads which once adorned the fountain clock at Yuanmingyuan — literally translated as “the gardens of perfect brightness” — outside of Beijing in the Qing dynasty of the 18th century.
Claudia Brown, a professor of Chinese art at ASU, recounted that Yuanmingyuan was looted and destroyed by Europeans after the Opium Wars. She said all of the bronze heads were lost. Five of them have resurfaced in auction since that time, each one sparking a new debate about repatriation and cultural theft on the global stage.
This exhibit brings that debate to downtown Phoenix.
With these sculptures, Ai reimagines art that was commissioned by a Manchu emperor, designed by Jesuits, cast by the Chinese bronze workers, displayed in China and looted by European soldiers. That this series is now being displayed in the American Southwest adds another layer of complexity to the exhibit.
“It’s a conceptual art that raises more questions than it answers, but that’s what it’s supposed to do,” Brown said.
This exhibit represents a first for Phoenix Art Museum, according to the exhibit’s curator, Dr. Janet Baker.
“This will be the first time that we will have had a very contemporary 21st-century Chinese artist show his work at Phoenix Art Museum,” Baker said. “We have had contemporary Chinese art — that is, work by living artists — but this is the most cutting-edge and certainly the most well-known contemporary Asian artist yet.”
Ai is one of the most prolific and controversial artists alive today. Famous for works ranging from the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 summer Olympics (“the Bird’s Nest”) to “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” a series of photographs that depicts the artist dropping an ancient vase worth thousands of dollars, Ai Weiwei is renowned for asking hard questions about the nature of the creation and destruction of art.
In addition to challenging the art world, Ai is known for challenging political establishment. In response to his political pieces dealing with the Chinese government, Ai has at different times been detained in a secret prison and beaten nearly to death by the Chinese police.
Ai was still being held by the Chinese government during the unveiling of the Circle of Animals series in New York in 2011.
Baker said she knew the artist when he lived in New York in the ’80s and ’90s.
“He was there at a time when China had recently opened its doors and begun to let people leave, so there were a lot of intellectuals from China at that time,” Baker said.
While Ai did spend a fair amount of time partaking in the more hedonistic side of the New York art scene, Baker said it was his fascination with grassroots activism and street life in America that influenced the political nature of his art upon his return to China.
This exhibit exemplifies a great deal of that influence.
Baker said there will be an incorporation of Ai’s modern and ancient sensibilities into the display, using the museum’s 18th-century Chinese bronze works to provide historic context and the live feed of Ai’s Twitter to provide a modern context.
“He likes to use expletives a lot, so be prepared,” she added. “I’m sure we may get a letter or two from visitors about that.”
On Oct. 7 at 7 p.m., Baker will be further discussing the artist and his political context at a free lecture titled “Ai Weiwei: A perspective on two centuries of cultural misunderstanding.” The lecture will be held in Whiteman Hall of the Phoenix Art Museum.
Contact the reporter at csmannin@asu.edu
