There is no excuse to kill. There is no excuse for the war. And there is no excuse for indifference.
It does not seem to be the answer to a question that of the Chinese artist and activist to the Weiwei, it seems rather an appeal. In an era in which art is often reduced to aesthetic entertainment, in a moment of renewed global tension, with ongoing wars, disturbing politicians and a culture that risks addiction to silence, his voice crosses the subject of contemporary art, denounces and resists. In short, Weiwei enters the scene as a slit in the smooth language of the system. His presence – even just verbal – is an open crack in the wall of contemporary rhetoric. “I am very happy to be here,” he said yesterday, inaugurating at Palazzo Corvaja for Taobuk His installation for the first time in Italy, “Water Lilies”, curated by Arturo Galansino, general manager of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, in the presence of the director of the Antonella Ferrara festival, and the deputy mayor of Taormina Jonathan launches. “I am not a political artist, I am simply a man who tries to tell the truth with the tools he has available,” he reiterated surrounded by the affectionate welcome of the public to whom he offered himself generously.
During the meeting on Friday evening he immediately understood that, in a calm tone, he would not send them to say: he had not told his life to please the thick audience but had made it a subject of art and, together, an act of accusation. The exile, the prison, the silence imposed and the broken one: everything has become language.
Like the LEGO bricks (it used 650,000) instead of the canvas, the largest work made by the artist, 15 meters long, which winks at the Impressionist masterpiece “Le Ninfee” by Claude Monet: “I LEGO I started using them in 2014, while I was locked up in prison, to symbolically represent the condition of the” Freedom Fighters “, the fighters for freedom, the fighters for freedom. imprisoned for political reasons. I was in prison too: I designed the work inside and made it done outside. Since the 90s I stopped painting and I have chosen Lego bricks as a new means of expression because I find them suitable for creating two -dimensional works but with depth, keeping the playful character of the game ». Not for nothing LEGO, in Danish, means “plays well”.
An artist, Weiwei, who speaks of exile as a family place and that black door that appears at the center of his “at the Monet” water lilies, is not a habit, it is a wound. «It symbolizes the exile, living hidden. My father, poet and thinker, was sent into exile and I followed him; I too was arrested years later for eighty -one days. They didn’t tell me why. Nor was it explained to me why I was released ». There is a ferocious, but never cynical lucidity in him. A moral urgency that calls into question not only politics, but the viewer himself. The visitor of the museum, the social user, the distracted reader: «Today we got used to death. The media give us a mixture of true and false every day, and our sensitivity is under attack. We have to react ». The phrase that returns like a mantra is: “We have to make our voices heard”. It is an exhortation, of course, but also a complaint: «The world has stopped speaking. We became silent in front of the tragedy, simple spectators ». There is an invitation in his words – sometimes an injunction – to recognize that dignity is not negotiable.
His is a sort of artistic militancy, in which personal experience becomes a collective tool. And it is also made political language, when it speaks of boundaries: not only those traced on the maps, but the invisible ones, the most subtle: «There are linguistic, religious, racial boundaries. Boundaries traced by bureaucracy, imposed differences. I carry them inside. ” The artist’s biography is, in fact, the map of a continuous journey: the communist China where it was born and raised, the escape, the US that hosted it, Germany and now Portugal where it lives. Every place, a language, every language, a border to overcome. «Poverty is one of these boundaries. It prevents people from studying, understanding, growing. And I lived this. Each battle for freedom is a battle for a different configuration of society ». And then there is technology. Artificial intelligence, the great seducer of this unstable present. At the Weiwei he looks at her without enthusiasm. Indeed, with distrust. «Artificial intelligence is afraid of the difference. We humans, no. We have to know how to accept the error, because it is there that true intelligence is born. Life never gives perfect answers. Forces you to look for them alone ».
It says it clearly, even brutal, but it is a crucial point: the car replies, but does not understand. The man, if he wants, can still choose. Art then is not a refuge, it is a battlefield, it is the place where the human is saved if possible. And if the artist’s voice sounds loud, it is because “we can no longer imagine the future”. So what warranty can we give to a newborn born today? Ai Weiwei does not offer solutions. Offers questions. Those that hurt. Those that make you wake up. Those that no algorithm will ever make formulate. The last teaching, the most unexpected one? There is no art – nor freedom – without effort, without doubt, without failure. Take notes who lives by chasing performance at all costs.
Yesterday in Taobuk, Peter Cameron and Susanna Tamaro, welcomed by the embrace of the public, and the prosecutor of Naples Nicola Gratteri, who spoke of justice and legality, dialogue with Elvira Terranova.