Ai Weiwei sounds alert for Hong Kong as he says plate up for auction designed while living in detention in China

The former British colony faces the same fate as the Tibetans and the Uighurs, the artist tells Arjun Neil Alim and Francesco Loy Bell
Ai Weiwei
Getty Images
Francesco Loy Bell28 July 2020

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has issued a stark warning that China’s denial of human rights of the Uighur people in Xinjiang is a foreshadowing of the fate of Hong Kong.

The dissident artist said: “What is happening in Xinjiang is a look into the future of what will happen to Hong Kong. China sees it as simply a matter of domestic policy to crack down on minority groups by the hundreds of thousands. Tibetans have also faced similar treatment. It has been this way for years.”

He added: “The Hong Kong situation has shown us that this authoritarian society will never give any space for discussion or negotiation. It is simply incapable of communicating with those with different ideas or ideologies.

“They have always been this way and as long as the communists exist will remain the same into the future. ‘One Country, Two Systems’ was finished the moment China applied its national security law to Hong Kong.”

In an exclusive interview that veers between the personal and the political, Ai, 62, a supporter of our Food For London Now campaign, also talked about the painful origins of his floral porcelain plate which goes under the hammer as part of the Sotheby’s contemporary charity art auction that closes on July 30.

“I designed the plate when I was living under detention in China [in 2011]”, he said. “For 600 days, I placed a fresh bouquet of flowers in the bicycle basket in front of my studio’s gate. I photographed them and posted those images online to demand the restoration of my right to travel.”

Plate of protest: Ai Weiwei’s auction item, on show at Sotheby’s, was designed during his period under house arrest in China
Nigel Howard

The auction is raising money for The Felix Project, the largest food surplus distributor in the UK and our appeal beneficiary. Ai stressed the importance of ensuring people have enough to eat.

“Sharing food is the most fundamental human gesture, beyond ideology or religion,” he said. “I have visited refugee camps around the world where people ate in unthinkable conditions. I remember seeing people wait in line for hours simply for a cup of tea, people cooking over open flames without any tools.”

Since the coronavirus pandemic, Ai has launched himself into artistic and humanitarian projects. “Every event that happens around me has an impact on my work. I would have no work without the emotions or consciousness raised by those events.”

In June he raised more than £1 million selling face masks with his renowned motifs of sunflower seeds and a defiant middle finger to support the work of international humanitarian charities battling coronavirus.

He has also produced three documentaries, one covering a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh and another about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.

While he rejects the increasingly popular suggestion of a “new cold war between China and the West”, he warns that if the West does not have a clear strategy, “the West will lose this competition”.

Ai’s father Ai Qing was one of China’s most eminent literary figures. He fell out of favour with the regime and the family was exiled to Xinjiang in the far-west, where his father was forced to clean communal latrines. In 2015, Weiwei was finally granted a passport and permission to leave China. He now lives in Cambridge and has a studio in Berlin.

Of his vision post the pandemic, he said: “Covid-19 will adjust our understanding of how individuals relate to society and the world. It has shown us no one can be safe, healthy and secure all on their own, but must deal with the same issues as their neighbours, community, and even those in other countries.”

Ai Weiwei’s Small Plate With Flowers and other works from the Food For London Now auction are available until July 30.

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