The exhibition – titled Er Xi, or ‘child’s play’ – is a group of dragons and seven-headed creatures of bamboo and paper, created by Ai Weiwei taking flight inside Paris’ Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche department store.

Ai weiwei took cues from popular Chinese legends called Shan Hai Jing for the exhibition, a collection of epic tales and popular legends that dates back to chinese antiquity, told by children for more than 2,000 years. the artist selected some two dozen characters and mythological creatures to personify inside the space, adopting the ancient technique of traditional kites, which brings together the flexibility of bamboo and lightweight silk.

Ai weiwei describes, ‘This experience also allows me to find a new way to conceive an exhibition, with constraints that are different from a museum’s or a gallery’s. Exploring new potentials is an integral part of my work as an artist,’ and he adds ‘Showing at Le Bon Marché is using a new medium, the department store, to encounter a new audience as broad as a museum’s. Introducing the fantastic idea within a retail space strikes the imagination of customers, visitors and passersby. We all lead parallel lives in this other world of dreams, fantasies and fears. We must learn to coexist with them, as they are an integral part of our humanity; to embrace our mythology. Children know how to do this naturally. This exhibition speaks to our inner child.’

The exhibition is divided into three areas of the store: windows, atriums and the gallery. The ten storefront display cases of le Bon Marché are transformed into stages for mythological storytelling. The woven bamboo dragon’s structure echoes the space’s interior columns, while the creature’s panelled forms mirror the panels of the ceiling. Sculptures of other mythological creatures have taken over the store’s atrium, while two-dimensional bamboo figures fill its window displays.

Venue.- Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche, 24, rue de Sèvres. Paris. France
Dates.- Er Xi at Le Bon Marché runs until 20 February.

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Ai Weiwei is a chinese conceptual artist, also works as an architect, photographer, curator and globally recognised human rights activist. Born in 1957 in Beijing, he began his training at Beijing Film Academy and later continued at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

His work has been exhibited around the world with solo exhibitions at Stiftung DKM, Duisburg (2010); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2009); Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Cambelltown Arts Center, Sydney (2008); and the Groninger Museum, Groningen (2008), and participation in the 48th Venice Biennale in Italy (1999, 2008, 2010); Guangzhou Triennale in China (2002, 2005), Busan Biennial in Korea (2006), Documenta 12 in Germany (2007), and the 29th Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2010). In October 2010, Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" was installed in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London. Ai Weiwei participated in the Serpentine Gallery's China Power Station exhibition in 2006, and the Serpentine Gallery Map Marathon in 2010.

The last solo exhibitions included Ai Weiwei in the Chapel, on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park through November 2, 2014; Evidence at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2014; and Ai Weiwei: According to What?, which was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2009, and traveled to North American venues in 2013–14. Ai collaborated with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the “bird’s nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and on the Serpentine Gallery, 2012 London. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation in 2012.


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