Dispatches from Venice: Ai Wei Wei's Disposition

Originally published in Apollo Muse, June 5 2013

Dispatches from Venice: Lemma Shehadi on Ai Wei Wei. Read on the Apollo blog!... http://t.co/rVRPU5S3X1
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Sant’Antonin was tormented by demons. On the ceilings of the 12^th c. Sant’Antonin Church in Castello, Venice, he is portrayed with Saint Saba – an echo of the medieval war between the Genovese and Venetians. This week, and until November, the church’s prayer benches have been replaced by six iron crates. This is for Disposition, a collateral pavilion by the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei and the Italian Zuecca Gallery. Bleak and mournful, they remind me of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, but within the context of the Sant’Antonin Church, they can also be seen as the stages of the cross.

Photos: Lemma Shehadi

The crates tell the harrowing story of the artist’s experience in prison.  Inside them are replicas of his prison room, where a model  Ai Wei Wei goes about his daily routine. But within the stark, isolated space, the artist is never alone. Model prison guards stand watching as he eats, pisses and sleeps – and so too does the audience spy on him through the small apertures along the walls of his iron home.

The rooms are bare and oppressively white. However the colours, when used, evoke those of Venetian painting. Such direct references to Venice and its history, not least through the use of Sant’Antonin church, interweaves  the work, and the Biennale into the fabric of the city.  Thus, though the artist is under house arrest in China, the pavilion has a strong sense of his presence, as if he had been there to build the work.

S.A.C.R.E.D. the name of this installation in Sant’Antonin is half of a two part collateral pavilion,  set up by the Italian Zuecca Gallery in collaboration with Lisson, who represent Ai Wei Wei. On the Giudecca island in Zitelle, home of the Zuecca project space, Wei Wei’s installation Straight is also on display. This was first exhibited in 2012 at the Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C. Here steel bars that held up the schools destroyed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan have been restored and are on display. It was his involvement in the investigation, and his outcry against the government that had him incarcerated.

Ai Wei Wei is no doubt an interesting figure. But why is it important to have a pavilion dedicated to him at the Venice Biennale? With the Republic of China’s pavilion just a few minutes away, what impact will this have? Perhaps the strongest aspect of the show is that it raises such questions about the Biennale, and the uncertain relationship between art and freedom of expression.