Ai Weiwei to publish memoir in 2017 on ‘struggle for individual freedom’
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei poses for photographers during the unveiling of his new sculpture “Forever” outside the Gherkin building in London on Sept. 16, 2015.
Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and noted free speech activist, is writing his memoirs that will be published in 2017 by Crown, the publisher announced this week.
The book will be published in multiple countries in print, audio and digital formats and is expected to cover the artist’s life, professional career and online activism. It will also recount the years that Ai spent living and working in New York during the 1980s and early ‘90s, before he became an international art star.
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Ai said the book also would discuss his father, the acclaimed Chinese poet Ai Qing, who was punished during the Cultural Revolution.
“I write about my father, his generation, and my own experience, our struggle for individual freedom and self-expression in this old society,” the artist said in the announcement. “I live in a totalitarian society (so did my father), which denies human freedom and values.”
He added: “Totalitarianism contravenes human nature and human ideals. The history of totalitarianism is one characterized by the state’s continuous attempts to destroy individual memories.”
Ai has been a vocal critic of the Chinese government’s censorship of speech, and he has used social media channels, especially Twitter, to speak out against political oppression.
In 2011 Chinese authorities arrested the artist in Beijing and placed him in secret detention for 81 days. He was released but forbidden to leave the country while on bail. His passport was returned to him this year.
He has criticized the Chinese government for its handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which schoolchildren died.
Ai recently opened a major solo exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition is set to run through December.
Crown, a division of Penguin Random House, said that the currently untitled book is scheduled for worldwide publication sometime in spring 2017.
Countries where the book will appear include the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Brazil, the publisher said.
China didn’t appear on the list.
Twitter: @DavidNgLAT
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