Photo: Safe Passage installation in Berlin (Photo: NWY69/Flickr)

Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei’s famous art installation, Safe Passage, made its U.S. debut last month at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). Comprising 2,400 life jackets discarded by refugees who made the often-dangerous passage from Turkey to Greece, the eye-catching multicolored installation covers the museum’s six towering exterior neoclassical columns. Making its way around the world, the installation was previously featured on the columns of the Berlin Konzerthaus, Yokohama Museum of Art, and the National Archives of Chile. 

The MIA’s head of contemporary art, Gabriel Ritter, notes that the decision to bring Ai’s work to Minneapolis is part of a larger conversation, as Minnesota has the highest number of refugees per capita of any U.S. state. Safe Passages is one work in the “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Art and Migration” exhibition scheduled to remain at MIA through May 24. (With the museum currently closed to the public due to the coronavirus, Ai’s installation is the most accessible at present.)

Considered one of the world’s most famous contemporary artists and activists, Ai has been a vocal critic of Europe’s response to the refugee crisis. The 62-year-old visited refugee camps several times in 2015, sparking his creation of Safe Passage (the life jackets were donated by the mayor of Lesvos) and the large-scale installation Laundromat, a display of 2,046 articles of clothing salvaged from the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece. In 2017, Ai turned to filmmaking with Human Flow, which documented the refugee crisis across more than 20 countries, and the follow-up, The Rest.

While many view Ai’s art and films as powerful expressions of the refugee experience, some have accused him of exploiting the struggle of refugees to promote his personal image, and treating them as a “faceless, nameless” mass. Ai also received backlash for his restaging of the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose tragic drowning sparked worldwide attention.

Ai has been steadfast in defending his work, emphasizing the value his art has in evoking discomfort, questioning existing judgments, and forcing people to confront issues of displacement. He also admits that his work is inherently selfish as it is a reflection of his personal journey processing his family's forced exile within China for two decades and his departure from China, where he was imprisoned in 2011 for criticizing the government. 

“I’m very fortunate—I’m like a high-end refugee,” Ai said in an interview with The Art Newspaper. “I can speak to the media and I get to do so many shows but I have a nation I cannot go back to. It’s very hard to think conceptually ‘I am settled here’ because everything is so uncertain. Uncertainty gives me a clear understanding about the refugee condition.”

Best regards,

Editor, Migration Information Source