Barricades on windows. Soleil Levant by Ai Weiwei. Installation on the facade towards Nyhavn

The artist Ai Weiwei returns to focus on the refugee crisis that is currently taking place across Europe. On this occasion, the artist have instaled barricades on the windows of the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark using life jackets retrieved from refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Ai Weiwei, "Soleil Levant", 2017. Installation view, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2017. Life jackets in front of windows of facade. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph © Anders Sune Berg.

The inauguration of the new Ai Weiwei facility took place on United Nations International Day of Refugees (June 20, 2017). Called Soleil Levante, the facility mounts barricades at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg windows with more than 3500 life jackets retrieved from refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Focus on the humanitarian crisis.With this installation, Ai Weiwei hopes to bring focus to the refugee crisis currently taking place across Europe. According to UNHCR, 1,377,349 individuals arrived in Europe via sea in 2015 and 2016. In the same period, over 8000 individuals have died or disappeared attempting this journey. It is the humanitarian crisis, on which Ai Weiwei intends to make a call of attention.

The name of the work stems from Claude Monet’s painting Impression. Soleil Levant from 1872, which depicts the harbour in Le Havre at the end of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war. Whereas Monet’s landscape painting captures the political and social reality of its time with its cranes, steamboats and industrialisation, Ai Weiwei’s Soleil Levant draws attention to the political and social reality of today through refugee lifejackets.

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Artist

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Ai Weiwei

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Curators

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Luise Faurschou from ART 2030 and Michael Thouber from Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

Ai Weiwei

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.