In this essay I will be discussing how Ai Weiwei and Felix Gonzalez-Torres have engaged with social or community based practices throughout their artwork and how their works relate to earlier movements of socially engaged art. Both artists have a strong political stance and use socially engaged art as a medium to raise questions and reach a broad (global?) audience.
Firstly I will introduce Ai weiwei and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Then I will examine Ai Weiwei’s work Sunflower Seeds 2010 and Gonzales-Torres’s work “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) I chose to research these works because they are similar in appearance and political potency.
Social art can be defined as any Art works placed or created in the eye of the public that include interaction in some form. Not only can the audience observe the artwork they can become part of the work. The art critic Grant Kester (2011) describes socially engaged artists as people that choose to work outside of their studios or private place to creating art within a community or a public space, allowing the public to take part in the art making process.
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He was born in China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1950s; this was a time of aggressive protests and civil discontent in the People’s Republic of China, as a consequence of the notorious Chairman Mao. Mao’s communist party enforced social, political, and economic upheaval; widespread persecution; and the destruction of antiques, historical sites, and culture. Weiwei’s father Ai Qing, a significant poet, was condoned and deported to a labour camp along with his wife. This was provoked by a poem called “Garden of Love” which was thought to confront Mao’s views. Later joined by his young son Ai, it was here that a love of crafting and making objects was