AI WEIWEI, Study of Perspective (Tiananmen), n.d. [2014]
110 x 110 cm / 43 x 43 inches
silk scarf with hand-rolled edges, sleeve with punched hole
edition unknown
mint
published by Third Drawer Down, Fitzroy, Australia
€ 200,- plus € 18,- Track & Trace registered EU mail
inv.AWei 549-pr
On the back of the cover the work is described as “Study of Perspective – Tiananmen, 1995-2003”. This Product art item was sold out quickly and since 2013 not available anymore on Third Drawer Down’s website.
AI WEIWEI, Sunflower Seeds, 2010
21,7 x 21,7 cm / 110 x 110 cm
silk scarf, original cover with punched hole
edition unknown
mint
published by Third Drawer Down, Fitzroy, Australia
On the back of the envelope this work is described as “Sunflower Seeds (detail), 2010”. ‘Sunflower Seeds’ was an installation shown in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London in 2010. It seemed to be a huge flood of sunflower seed husks, in reality it was a flat scenery of over 100 million individually porcelain replicas of the seed. Handmade in China.
This edition was not for sale on the website of Third Drawer Down or Tate Modern’s webshop before January 2013.
AI WEIWEI, Namelist 2008-2011, 2014
size print 78,5 x 28 cm
offset on paper, here unframed
edition 100
numbered, hand signed by the artist
published by Art Edition, Cologne, Germany
mint
rare
inv.AWei 000-pr
Verso the print reads: ‘Names of the 2008 student-earthquake-victims researched by Ai Weiwei Studio, Courtesy of the artist’. At the lower part of the print a sequence of numbers is printed.
Ai Weiwei is well known for criticizing governmental behaviour of the People’s Republic of China, although he has no problems with giving the White House the finger. Having spent his younger years in New York in the 1980s, when conceptual and performance art were dominant and while Warhol was active, he has learnt how to combine his own life and art into a daring and often politically charged performance that helps to define how we should see China of today. Ai Weiwei has been harassed and jailed for his continually calls to account of the Chinese governmental attitude.
The print ‘Namelist’ (2008-2011) includes names of the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died during the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 due to a disproportionate number of collapses of shoddy schoolhouse constructions. Chinese authorities systematically neglected the deaths and its causes. The disaster was twisted. Therefore Ai Weiwei began to straighten out the record. Bad construction had contributed to the disaster and officials were very keen to suppress evidence of corruption. The factual number of victims was difficult to find out, until Weiwei and his helpers made the count, name by name. The students are memorialized at various exhibition venues and moments like here in the edition “Namelist”.
During the time Ai Weiwei was being withheld by the Chinese government, a period in which he was unable to travel and his passport having been taken in, he placed a fresh bouquet in the basket of a bicycle outside his studio each morning. His #aiflowers Instagram up loads invited people everywhere to make flowers to remember the very young students lost in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
Ai Weiwei: “Once we find the names and numbers, I think a scientific study should be done to study how the schools collapsed and how the students died,” says Ai. “If anybody tries to hide it, it is a crime to the people and the nation. This time I don’t think anybody can let it go.”
History of prices:
Karl & Faber, Munich, Germany 6 June 2019 € 4.625,- (incl. premium)
eBay 8 June 2014 € 1.577,- (hammer price)
AI WEIWEI, Study of Perspective (Tiananmen) Scarf, 2013
silk scarf with hand-rolled edges
110 x 110 cm / 43 x 43 inches
published by Artware, New York, USA
p.o.r.
inv.AWei 549-pr
AI WEIWEI, Maybe being powerful means to be fragile, 2013
skateboard
hand numbered, signed in print on deck
edition 150
mint
published by TheSK8room.com
€ 795,- + € 15,- Track & Trace registered EU mail
inv.AWei 000-pr
This is part of a set of hand-numbered and signed skateboard decks by Chinese artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei. These carry recognisable images from his oeuvre, including porcelain crabs and sesame seeds, accompanied by one of Ai’s aphorisms, such as “The World is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility” and “There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship in the world.”
History of prices:
Roseberys, London, UK 9 March, 2021 € 584,- (hammer price)
TheSK8room.com September 2013 € 300,- (year of issue)
AI WEIWEI, There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship in the world, 2013
skateboard
hand numbered, signed in print on deck
edition 150
published by TheSK8room.com
This is part of a set of hand-numbered and signed skateboard decks by Chinese artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei. These carry recognisable images from his oeuvre, including porcelain crabs and sesame seeds, accompanied by one of Ai’s aphorisms, such as “The World is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility” and “There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship in the world.”
AI WEIWEI, Dropping a Han dynasty urn, 2013
50 x 70 cm
linen tea towel, Weiwei-ism quote
published by Third Drawer Down, Indooroopilly, Australia
price in year of issue AU$ 40.- September 2013
AI WEIWEI, Sunflower Seeds, 2010
40 x 40 cm
silk handkerchief, hand rolled edges
sealed wrapping
published by Third Drawer Down, Indooroopilly, Australia
Sunflower Seeds was an installation made up of ten million unique porcelain sunflower seeds. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of sixteen hundred inhabitants with skilled hands. The seeds were displayed at Tate Modern Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds formed a seemingly infinite landscape.
Sunflower Seeds; interview with Ai WeiWei about the production of ceramic seeds for Tate Modern Turbine Hall in London.
AI WEIWEI, The World is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility, 2013
skateboard
hand numbered, signed in print on deck
edition 150
published by TheSK8room.com
This is part of a set of three, hand-numbered and signed in print skateboard decks by Ai Weiwei. In the works of Ai Weiwei, the story and political context is important, if not more relevant than the objects themselves. In the case of the depicted crabs on his skate board design he refers to a story about a dinner party Ai arranged in 2010 as a protest against a sudden bureaucratic decision to demolish his brand-new studio. In 2008 when the mayor of Jiading (a northern district of Shanghai) invited Ai to build a studio space that would provide a cultural center for the city. The government promised to provide all the proper permits and to support the studio’s construction. Soon after the building was completed in 2010, the same government pledged to demolish Ai’s newly built studio. In response, Ai invited friends and supporters via Twitter to gather in his studio’s courtyard for a feast of 10,000 river crabs standing for the false “harmony” and invitation the government offered. Ai was placed under house arrest and couldn’t attend the feast with the crabs, but it went on without him. In the beginning of 2011 the studio was razed.
Based on stories like the one above porcelain crabs and sesame seeds have become part of his oeuvre, accompanied by one of his aphorisms, such as “The World is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility” or “There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship in the world.”
AI WEIWEI, To Fight with Crossed Arms, 2007
50,8 cm x 25,4 cm / 20 in x 10 inches
four C-prints, each print verso numbered in ink
edition 18 + 4 AP
estimate US$ 18,000 – US$ 22,000 December 2012
Artsation, Munich, Germany € 28.500,- August 2013
“To fight with Crossed Arms” is a series of 4 photographs and one of the many collaborations between Ai Weiwei and the MAP Office*. With this work the collective intended to engage Ai Wei Wei in a conversation about one of his architectural projects by challenging him to pick up a brick and pose “holding a brick”, “showing a brick”, “throwing a brick” and “putting a brick on the head”. Four positions assumed by Wei Wei: the architect, the curator, the critic, the artist and presented as an allegory.
* MAP Office is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (born 1966, Casablanca, Monaco) and Valérie Portefaix (born 1969, Saint-Etienne, France). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space, humour, games and fiction are usually part of their approach.
