Artling Exclusive: Ai Weiwei's Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn

The Artling is excited to announce an exclusive with internationally-renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, in collaboration with Chambers Fine Art. Known for his gripping, thought-provoking oeuvre, Ai Weiwei’s latest features arguably his most famous work, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a photographic triptych that turned heads and caused a ripple in the art world in 1995, two years after his return to China from New York.

Ai has become one of the world’s most important artists and figures of our time. His artistic endeavours comment on aspects of humanity and authoritarian systems that silence and suppress the marginalized. The artist always questions the power structure in his works and is adamant about humans and our right to freedom of speech amongst the heavy censorship and constant surveillance. His works also often question embracing modernity, social responsibility in times of crisis as well as art and how we bestow value to it. Most notably, his photographic performance captured in Dropping the Han Dynasty Urn caused speculation over his motivation and the authenticity of the urn.

In 2010 a commentator on the work of Ai Weiwei remarked that “his fame and image remain primarily associated with the iconoclastic component of his art and especially his 1995 photographic triptych, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.”  This reputation remains till this day where it is his identification with the cause of human rights that has contributed to the widespread recognition of his name.

First published in 1995 in The White Book, one of three books that Ai Weiwei coedited in the mid-1990s, the triptych was later enlarged to 148 x 121 cm to accommodate the many requests for exhibition. A further enlargement was made in 2015 when Ai made the decision to execute it in Lego, a material he had first been used for the portraits of 176 prisoners of conscience in the exhibition @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz Island in 2015. 

The new photographic edition, a LightJet print on Ilford Baryta paper, returns the image to a more intimate scale, conveying the private nature of the performance, without spectators. Its modest size makes it possible for the private collector to contemplate the work in their own home.

The origin of the triptych dates to 1995 when Ai was living in his family home in Beijing, after having spent a decade in New York in the 1980s and early 1990s as his father’s health was declining. During his time back home, he spent a great deal of his time in the antique markets that at the time had an abundance of material excavated during the rebuilding of Beijing and throughout the 1990s. Handling thousands of objects and beginning to collect himself, he began to develop considerable expertise. He also began a lifelong interest in questions regarding the real and the fake, copy versus original and began to look askance at the unquestioning veneration for anything old or considered sacred.

The brief performance Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn raises many questions, and this accounts for a large part of its fascination. There may be a reference to the violence of The Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao’s statement that the only way to build a new world is to destroy the old one. It can also be interpreted as a veiled comment on the destruction of heritage going on as a side effect of unchecked modernization. The ambiguity of the authenticity of the urn was also a topic of discussion given Ai’s calm demeanour in the performance, giving the triptych the power that it possesses to this day.

About the Artist

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist from Beijing devoted to art and its political implications. He is the son of celebrated poet Ai Qing and lived in exile during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Having lived in New York in the 1980s, Ai Weiwei immersed himself in art, studying artists namely Marcel Duchamp –whose works are associated with the Dada movement– and considered his concept of the readymade as a way to create meaningful art. Through his works, Ai Weiwei questions the development of industrialization and modernization that completely ignores and disregards the preservation of tradition and heritage all in the name of progress. Following his interest in Chinese antiquities upon his return to China, Ai Weiwei utilizes these relics as raw materials for his art, dynamically and elegantly combining esteem for the past with the inescapable drive towards the future. Ai gives old, unsung items a new life of their own, bringing them to light in the most elaborate way and never forgetting to make a statement.

To view Ai Weiwei's artworks, click here.