Influential Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will be the next artist in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall for The Unilever Series, thus becoming the first artist living in the Asia to be commissioned for the series. Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai is one of the most prominent figures in Chinese art today, having played a key role in the last three decades as conceptual artist, curator, critic, designer and even architect (He collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron in designing the national ‘Bird's Nest’ stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics). He created his seminal work Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn in 1995 (photo), which not only began his practice’s continuing reuse of antique readymade objects, but also demonstrated his questioning attitude towards cultural values and social history. Other examples of his work include covering 39 neolithic vases with brightly coloured paint (Coloured Vases) in 2006, and distributing 1,001 Qing and Ming Dynasty chairs in venues across the city at Documenta in 2007.
The artist has said that “liberty is about the right to question everything.” His outspoken challenge to the government has often got him the wrap of the local authorities. Last year, Chinese police repordely burst into his hotel room and beat him so badly that surgeons in Munich had to drill two holes in his head to remove fluid from his skull. The beating followed Ai's investigation into the deaths of 5,250 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which inspired Remembering 2009, a work made up of thousands of children's backpacks. It will be very interesting to see what he does for this new Tate commission to be unveiled on 12 October.
