To find the origin of Don Quixote's concept, it is necessary to go back to Ai Weiwei's childhood. The artist's father, the poet Ai Quing, had among his books an edition of Cervantes' masterpiece, which Ai vividly remembers for its beautiful cover and illustrations and the brief introduction to the story that his father gave him. Living in the remote deserts of Xinjiang, where his father had been deported, the extravagant couple Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sparked his childhood imagination and revealed to him that a whole world of fantasy could be conceived, beyond the doctrines that dictated that everything should conform to certain logics and rationalities.
The MUSAC will be the first museum to exhibit in depth the body of works made with building blocks (LEGO or WOMA type), which Ai Weiwei has been working on since 2007: 19 of the 60 he has produced so far will be on display. With these toy bricks, the artist proposes a bold challenge to traditional two-dimensional painting.
“They are the perfect tool to question the political and aesthetic past of art. I chose LEGO bricks because they are completely alien to me: they are neutral, even absurd, with a palette limited to forty colours. Using this material to question political or aesthetic messages from the past seems particularly appropriate to me, as it does not bear the weight of traditional forms of artistic expression, such as painting or sculpture. In a sense, these toy bricks free us from the burdens of historical artistic baggage”.
Ai Weiwei.
There are three groups of LEGO works on display in Don Quixote. The first consists of versions of masterpieces from the history of art, which in this case are made on a 1:1 scale. These include, for example, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper in Pink, but via Andy Warhol's version, which is almost seven metres long.
"I would never choose a masterpiece at random. The painting must resonate with me and my political experience, so almost every artwork I choose tells a specific theme that I care deeply about. There is always a deliberate reason behind my selection. I hope that viewers, when reading the descriptions of these works, can understand that these masterpieces are chosen thoughtfully, not arbitrarily or casually. Making such choices is often a challenging process".
Ai Weiwei.
Each room is designed in an immersive way, with a “skin” that generates works in floor-to-ceiling wallpaper format, more than six metres high. In addition to this, there are 10 films that summarise Ai Weiwei's work in film and video art, from the documentary Human Tide (2017) to the video Beijing 2003 (2003), which lasts 150 hours and covers 2,400 km of the streets of Beijing, recorded from a moving van.
A second group is made up of paintings that are based on images taken from the media such as The U.S. Navy collecting the remains of a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon shot down by an Air Force fighter, which refer to contemporary geopolitical and humanitarian crises.
In these works, he always introduces an element foreign to the original composition. The third group are those works that refer to Weiwei's own pieces made in other techniques, such as Illumination (2019), which reflects a selfie that the artist himself took in an elevator with the police officers who were guarding him at the time.
Working with large formats has been a constant in Weiwei's career. Among his monumental works included in his exhibition at the MUSAC is La Commedia Umana (2017-2021), which is being shown for the first time in a museum. At more than eight meters high, six meters wide and weighing 2,700 kg, it is one of the largest Murano chandeliers ever made. It is made up of some 2,000 pieces.
"Ai Weiwei has been working with Murano glass since 2017. This gigantic black chandelier was handmade by artisan glassmakers in collaboration with a foundation dedicated to glass work, Berengo Studio".
Rodríguez Fominaya.
Commedia Umana reimagines classic Venetian glass chandeliers and emerges from the artist’s reflections on humanism and humanity, as well as his advocacy for freedom of expression. Migration crises, the threat of current and future pandemics, and devastating global environmental changes fuel Ai Weiwei’s reflections on the human-nature relationship and the uncertain future of human civilization, ultimately redefining the balance between life and death. Continuing with his large-scale installations is Life Cycle, from 2018. Its more than 20 meters long depicts a zodiac like those used by refugees. In 2013, Ai Weiwei began creating works in bamboo using traditional kite-making techniques as a sculptural response to the global refugee crisis. Life Cycle explores the motif of the low-quality, inflatable boats used by migrants to reach Europe. The work Olive Tree Roots also alludes to the notion of displacement and exile.
Moving beyond a concern for form or protest, the artist now measures our existence in relation to economic, political, natural and social forces, combining craftsmanship with conceptual creativity. Universal symbols of humanity and community, such as bicycles, flowers and trees, coupled with the eternal problems of borders and conflict, gain renewed force through installations, sculptures, films and photographs, while he continues to speak out publicly on the issues he considers important. He is one of the leading cultural figures of his generation and has become an example of freedom of expression both in China and internationally.
