Ai Weiwei on reclaiming art from capitalism

By Ai Weiwei: artist and activist

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE, by which I mean the paintings, sculpture, audio-visual media, literature and poetry that have emerged since the Industrial Revolution, bears the mark of the times. Over the past 200 years fundamental changes in manufacturing, and an emphasis on the pursuit of profit, have transformed economics, politics and culture. It was a huge leap unlike anything that had previously occurred in history, dramatically expanding mankind’s capabilities and resulting in global differences in wealth and development. Powerful European and North American nations plundered other parts of the world. In the post-cold-war era, a new framework of globalisation emerged, championed by the West, its political bodies and monopolistic corporations. Political and cultural discourses are dominated by the need to make profits. The national boundaries that once delineated territories seem not to exist any more.

All this is reflected in our era’s culture. It is unduly influenced by profit-driven companies with inordinate power over our economic and political structures, education and media. Their pervasive impact is manifested in society’s value judgments, aesthetic education and philosophy. The cultural landscape is also shaped by the framework of Western capitalism and its associated concepts of democracy, freedom and a partial dose of socialism. A complete system has been formed, spanning from the shaping of aesthetics under these conditions, through cultural education, art criticism and the curatorial processes of galleries and museums, to artworks’ eventual entry into the narrative of Western art history. This system reflects the values and aesthetic tendencies of capitalism in every respect.