An autobiography in pictures: photographs taken by Ai Weiwei that
capture his emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is
today.
Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs 1993-2003 is an autobiography in
pictures. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and
its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared
into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's
most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's
repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised
middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the
more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government
construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of
strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of
Chinese citizens.
This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look
at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and
preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs
capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is
today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China
than this.
The book contains more than 600 carefully sequenced images culled from
an archive of more than 40,000 photographs taken by Ai: a narrative arc
carefully shaped by an artist keenly aware of photography's ability to
tell stories. It includes a shattering series of photographs taken
between 1993 and 1996 devoted to the final illness and death of Ai's
father Ai Qing. The book is a sequel to Ai Weiwei: New York 1983-1993,
a privately published book that collected photographs taken by Ai during
his years on the New York art scene.
