In this week’s New Yorker, Evan Osnos profiles artist and activist Ai Weiwei (by subscription only). On his blog, Osnos posts a video by Alison Klayman, who is producing a documentary about Ai to be released next year:
Osnos also provides a useful run-down of readings by or about Ai and his famous family. From that list:
– Karen Smith, the curator and critic, has done invaluable work on Chinese art for years, including a long essay last year about Ai Weiwei in a book from Phaidon Press: “Ai Weiwei” (2009). This valuable book also includes an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and a detailed review by Bernard Fibicher. Smith also has a new edition out of “Nine Lives,” her group portrait of the birth of the Chinese avant-garde.
– Philip Tinari is the editor of Leap magazine, a new bilingual journal of contemporary Chinese art. (3030 Press has an interview with Tinari about it.) He has written some of the best critical analysis of Ai Weiwei’s work over the years, including “A True Kind of Living,” which appeared in ArtForum.
– For more of Ai’s own writing, keep an eye out for a forthcoming collection of his blog, interviews, and other important pieces, translated and edited by Lee Ambrozy, the Beijing-based art watcher who has already produced very valuable translations of Ai’s writing. She writes at Sinopop, among other places.
