On most days, much like the feed of countless other users, the stream of photos belonging to Instagram user aiww seems a public collage of personal memory. The digital grid is peppered with snapshots of close friends, smiling colleagues, and the occasional aerial view of a decadent dish about to be eaten for lunch. But recently, these candid uploads from the Instagram account of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei have been punctuated by a series of single headshots—constructed by collections of thousands of colorful pixels—uploaded in daily bursts. Upon closer look, one realizes that the pixels are plastic Lego pieces, coalescing to form real human faces.
While the likenesses of Liu Xiaobo, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Martin Luther King, Jr, might be among the easiest for viewers to pick out, the diverse batches include scores of portraits exhibiting numerous lesser-known figures. Thanks to the names and mini-biographies in each upload description, we are told something of their stories. We learn that Hamad al-Naqi was sentenced to ten years in prison in Kuwait for speaking out against “the Prophet”; that Ales Bialiatski was “convicted of concealment of income on a large scale”; that Iván Fernández Depestre was imprisoned for “dangerousness—the special proclivity of a person to commit crimes.” In cases such as Bialiatski’s, the charges quickly become a glaring distortion of the underlying action which unites all of the ‘faces’ depicted in the feed: all were political dissidents advocating for freedoms, and all were censored, imprisoned; in some cases, sentenced to death. When paralleled with the political chains of human oppression, the sterile uniformity of mass-manufactured toys for children emerges in sharp relief. The series, in drawing attention to oppressed dissidents, interrogates the syrupy facade of synthetic brick. But despite what at first appears to be an exceptionally innovative humanitarian project, one might be surprised to learn that Lego pieces—for all their ready-made, plastic perfection—are far from being the only entity guilty of artificial appeal.
For those acquainted with China’s popular and political culture, it will come as no surprise that the architect behind the Lego series is none other than legendary artist provocateur and political dissident Ai Weiwei—a man Smithsonian Magazine hailed “the most dangerous man in China.” While it is difficult to trace the point at which the prolific artist might have first risen to public prominence, Ai—the son of the esteemed modern poet Ai Qing, who was denounced during the Cultural Revolution—has earned his now-legendary repute through odd and imaginative acts of rebellious expression. In 2009, Ai posted a photograph (in his usual spirit of facetious flair) depicting himself nude with only a photo-shopped image of llama covering his genitals—a literal representation of “grass-mud horse covering the middle”—with a caption clarifying what has become an infamous, subversive pun against the Communist Party. Caonima dangzhongyang or “Grass-mud horse covering the middle,” for example, sounds an awful lot in Mandarin like “f*** your mother, Communist Party.”
Perhaps the only asset of Ai’s more famed than his provocative artistic antics is his staunch tenacity. When Ai’s Weibo account—Weibo being the “Chinese version of Twitter”—was shut down by government censors without apparent explanation in 2009, the artist promptly created an account on Twitter (@aiww) and began publishing daily tweets. His posts, or ‘Weiwei-isms’ (as fondly dubbed by admirers), have ranged from the playfully facetious (“Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy”) to the sober and wise (“If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer”). When Ai was detained for 81 days on charges for which he was never properly convicted, the director Alison Klayman attributed his arrest not to his art (at that time, Tate London’s Sunflower Seeds), nor even Ai’s supposed collusion in launching a ‘jasmine rebellion,’ a quasi-movement that had been burgeoning at the time (and worried officials enough to cancel the 2011 International Jasmine Culture Festival). Instead, according to Klayman, Ai’s arrest was about “how his life is his art… how he gives interviews very freely. He does not self-censor what he thinks.” Ai may be the ‘most dangerous man’ in the country, but he has also been proclaimed by The Guardian to be “the most important artist in the world right now, a visionary who is defying an entire political system.”
To no one’s surprise, then, defiance has served as the featured ingredient of Ai’s latest artistic endeavor. What has been surprising, rather, is the current target of Ai’s rancor. Instead of assailing the Chinese government’s limitation of human freedoms as he has done in countless interview after installation, the oppressor in question is now the Danish Lego Group—the manufacturer of children’s toys. Tracing Ai’s Lego uploads to their earliest appearance in the feed, you will find a single black-and-white photo posted by in late October depicting a bird’s eye view of a toilet, a pile of Legos unceremoniously dumped into the bowl. In the description box of the toilet-and-Legos upload is a lengthy excerpt from an e-mail sent by the Lego Group dated September 12th, 2015 in the description box. The statement rejects a certain Ai Weiwei Studio’s bulk order of Lego bricks for works planned for a display in Melbourne this coming December. While the statement from the Lego Group outlines the exact ways in which the artist’s creative motives conflict with corporate policy, Ai concludes the Instagram description post with words of his own: “As a powerful corporation, Lego is an influential cultural and political actor in the globalized economy with questionable values. Lego’s refusal to sell its product to the artist is an act of censorship and discrimination.” In protest of Lego’s refusal to allow him a bulk purchase, he is uploading ten such Lego portraits each day for eighteen days, claiming to raise greater visibility for the issue of free speech.
Doubtless, it is a noble cause that drives Ai’s latest project, a work that is so clearly and intimately aligned with his own struggle for such freedoms in China. We are, after all, speaking of a figure whose personal history of protest reads like a litany of battle-wounds—a man who has withstood all possible challenge and defied intimidation from those who’ve tried for decades to silence him. His detainment in 2011 was far from being the first clash he’d ever encountered with the Chinese government; in 2009, Ai was so brutally beaten by police after attempting to testify for Tan Zuoren, an investigator for student casualties following government cover-up after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, that he later underwent surgery in Germany for a brain hemorrhage. Beyond Ai’s personal commitment to the matter, Ai correctly points out Lego’s obvious incentives to protect its own commercial interests in China. Their expansion to China is now steadily underway, as the Lego Group unveiled plans to build and operate its own 120,000 square meter Lego factory in China in 2013 and confirmed the development of a Legoland park in Shanghai this past October. With more than 600 billion parts produced worldwide, Lego’s cultural and political influence in a global context is undeniable.
But while a spokesperson from Lego confirmed that the order had been rejected on political grounds, spokesman Roar Rude Trangbaek asserted that any rejection based upon the principle was allegedly “not new.” Trangbaek has been further quoted as stating, “Any individual person can naturally purchase or get access to Lego bricks in other ways to create their Lego projects if they desire to do so, but as a company, we choose to refrain from engaging in these activities—through for example bulk purchase. In cases where we receive requests for donations or support for projects—such as the possibility of purchasing Lego bricks in large quantities—where we are made aware that there is a political context, we therefore kindly decline support.” According to Lego’s own explanation, their political stance was that of neutral non-participation. Aside from attaining the tacit “political” backing a bulk purchase from Lego might indicate, creatives were otherwise free to do with Lego pieces as they wished.
Characteristically indignant, nonetheless, Ai mobilized his gargantuan fanbase to aid his fight against “censorship.” Lego collection drop-off points were set up in museums as distant as Victoria, Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Málaga, Amsterdam, and New York. With snapshots of rapidly-filling donation receptacles, their progress was monitored and documented by a gleeful aiww over Instagram. Across Twitter, fans voiced their shared outrage: #legosforaiweiwei became a trending hashtag as the site buzzed with support, some users attaching photos of living room Lego bins to be sent to Ai, while others themselves showed off Ai’s favorite physical gesture (the middle-finger, of course) in front of their local Lego Store.
The outpouring of messages of support on Twitter have even included photos of the users’ children, posing with their crate of Legos in supposed anticipation of donating them to Ai. “Children as young as five are donating #Legosforweiwei at @NGVMelbourne,” Ai proudly retweeted, adding to his growing collection of donation center photos and tweets of fan support, the sum of which now dominate his feed. “This is a product that is loved and treasured by children,” Ai further lamented in an interview, voicing his great disappointment in the entity whose products are loved by his own son. The implicit assumption that manufacturers of children’s toys should inherently be held to a higher moral standard is both sentimentally predatory and logically tenuous. But it’s precisely these kinds of assertions have drawn Ai immense popular support for his project.
To Ai, the chaste reality of a children’s toy company whose priorities underhandedly extol the bottom-line is duplicitous, hypocritical, and morally deplorable. But one could claim the same thing of the artist who opportunistically accepts Legos from children under the guise of resisting “censorship.” Indeed, it must be noted that Lego’s refusal to partake in creating ‘political’ statements was in itself a political statement; Ai is not wrong in detecting this, and is justified in holding Lego accountable. But to attract public support for his Lego works under the rallying cry of “censorship” undermines both Ai’s credibility as an artist as well as the integrity of his crowd-sourced project that has, by now, relied upon donations of Legos from thousands. While many praised Ai’s leadership in his apparent triumph against Lego, Jonathan Jones of The Guardian penned an acerbic critique of Ai’s response as a hollow public relations stunt. “This gutsy and noble man risks looking silly by claiming to be ‘censored’ by Lego,” wrote Jones. “He is playing a game, pandering to people in the west who love the idea that corporate behaviour in the democratic world is as bad as the actions of the Chinese state. He, of all people, has to know that is untrue.”
The matter here goes beyond a simple, pedantic definition of terms. If Ai’s stature and influence is capable of mobilizing thousands to flock to their nearest museums and donate their personal collections of Legos for his vision, he should not take for granted the exceptional authority he wields in educating and inspiring a global community. To purposefully apply the label ‘censorship’ to behaviors that do not even resemble censorship is not only a manipulative act of misinformation, but further threatens to diminish any gravity the word will ever come to carry. Ai’s crowd-funded ‘victory’ in the Lego dispute, in fact, serves as more than flashpoint success for humanity’s inexorable struggle toward free speech—it is also an ironic illustration of the fragility and dangers of speech when recklessly commanded and used for personal profit. Rather than cheapening and threatening the cause upon which he has built an entire career, Ai would do better to draw attention to the real issue at hand—the sentiment he most recently expressed in an interview with The New York Times: “A company that sells pens [also] cannot tell a writer that he or she can’t do political or romantic writing. It’s really none of their business.”
If Ai had expended more energy in debating corporate ethics rather than launching impassioned tirades against Lego, he might realize that he has more in common with Lego than previously thought. Advocating a laissez-faire approach toward creative consumers in fact largely mirrors Lego’s unflinchingly hands-off approach to politics, with the only room for dispute being the trivial matter of bulk purchase. By now, the world may have grown used to Ai’s art of dissent by provocation, but his actions here have betrayed the former spirit of his noble cause—generating shallow spectacle for the sake of profit. If Ai has seriously positioned himself (as his artistic endeavor on Instagram daringly suggests) to be a global advocate for freedoms and transparency, he should resist the urge to cry wolf when the perpetrator is simply a disagreeable sheep. A mud-grass horse is a different story.
Image Credit: thierry ehrmann/Flickr