Ai Weiwei is a chinese conceptual artist, also works as an architect, photographer, curator and globally recognised human rights activist. Open in his criticism of the Chinese government, Ai was famously detained for months in 2011, then released to house arrest. “I don’t see myself as a dissident artist,” he says. “I see them as a dissident government!”
Himself a refugee, Ai Weiwei has almost entirely focused his work on advocating the refugees’ human rights and documenting their tragic condition throughout the past two years.
The installation exhibited in the National Gallery in Prague in 2017 is a colossal black rubber life raft, bulging with hundreds of anonymous human figures wearing life jackets. The giant 230-foot long boat, suspended in mid-air, is holding over 300 dark and faceless figures. All huddled together, children in the middle for extra protection. A few figures lie underneath the boat, their journey ended prematurely.
The humanitarian crisis has become especially dire since 2015 when the influx of refugees into Europe from Syria and elsewhere escalated dramatically. About 5.6 million Syrians are refugees, and another 6.2 million people are displaced within Syria. Nearly 12 million people in Syria need humanitarian assistance. At least half of the people affected by the Syrian refugee crisis are children.
Now, the Coronavirus pandemic could exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of the world’s refugees and internally displaced persons. Persons displaced internally and across borders are particularly at risk – and the majority of the world’s 25.9 million refugees and 41.3 million internally displaced persons are in developing countries that are only starting now to be affected by the pandemic.
Art as an expression of awareness of human suffering and an appeal to our compassion is something that has to be valued, not least because it reminds us of the better aspects of humanity.
If we see somebody who has been victimized by war or desperately trying to find a peaceful place, if we don’t accept those people, the real challenge and the real crisis is not of all the people who feel the pain but rather for the people who ignore to recognize it or pretend that it doesn’t exist. That is both a tragedy and a crime. There´s no refugee crisis, but only a human crisis. In dealing with refugees we have lost our very basic values.
GRAPHIC TRAFIC 