Chinese Authorities Destroyed Ai Weiwei’s Studio (Again)

On Friday afternoon, Chinese authorities entered Beijing’s ZuoYou Art District with cranes and bulldozers to clear the studio of internationally-renowned (and locally loved) artist-activist, Ai Weiwei. The former car-part factory had been the site of several major works including Fairytale Chairs (2007) and Life Cycle (2018), and Ai has taken to Instagram to pay tribute to the studio that had been his main creative space since 2006. Meanwhile, the artist’s teams are still working hard to salvage whatever they can from the site, considering that the demolition was not forewarned.

“They came and started knocking down the windows without telling us beforehand,” studio manager Ga Rang told AFP. “There’s still so much stuff inside.”

This isn’t the first time that Ai Weiwei's studio has been targeted by the government. The artist-activist has had a tumultuous relationship with the government–a relationship that arguably reached its climax in 2011 when the destruction of his Shanghai studio was followed by an 81-day detention, a 4-year house arrest, and a confiscated passport. Carrying on the legacy of his father (famed Chinese poet Ai Qing), Ai Weiwei has used his art to speak out for those who, unfortunately, do not have the opportunity to represent themselves and to courageously criticize the Chinese government for its corruption and violation of human rights. For a little over a decade now, this clash has exacerbated with the artist's commentary on domestic policies.

“It used to be called communism, but now it’s state capitalism — a capitalism where the communists dominate profit and power,” Ai told NPR.

The demolition of ZuoYou is but one of several incidents in the past few months where Beijing’s art districts and residential areas have suffered clearings. These projects are part of a wider suburban redevelopment strategy where the less ‘profitable’ structures are being replaced by malls and commercial buildings. Ai notes, often times this means that artists and migrant workers – those who do not have the finances nor the basic laws to protect their property rights - are being edged out of the cityscape. Unlike he who has issued a specific date by which he had to vacate the premise (albeit a date that the government evidently did not respect), migrant workers are evicted in the middle of the night, their personal belongings destroyed and, if they resist, face arrest. Thus, Ai Weiwei insists that the destruction of his studio is nothing compared to the wider damage that the authorities are causing on the general population. In China, gentrification has a price and he is acutely aware that he is one of the few whose voices can still be heard.

Un-coincidentally, Ai Weiwei has recently turned his focus to the plight of displaced peoples both locally and globally. This is a topic he explores in his latest documentary, Human Flow.