December 27, 2013, 5:09 am
Every morning the artist and dissident Ai Weiwei places fresh flowers in the basket of a bicycle outside his Beijing studio in a pretty protest at something serious: a government ban on his freedom to travel.
Last Monday, by the bluish-green door to his studio at No. 258 Caochangdi, bright orange and red African daisies were seen in the basket of the black Taiwanese Giant bicycle.
The flowers have provided a burst of color against the gray Beijing sky, and Mr. Ai’s quirky form of protest is being talked about, with amusement, by other artists living and working nearby in the arts district not far from Beijing’s international airport.
A recent post on his Twitter feed read: “Since Nov. 30, 2013, every morning I am putting a bouquet of flowers in the basket of a bicycle outside the front door of the No. 258 Caochangdi studio until I win back the right to travel.” Then he noted the day the photograph was taken: “The 27th day, Dec. 26, 2013.”
Earlier this month Mr. Ai told The New York Times: “My passport has been in the hands of the police for almost three years now,” adding, “I’ve lost my ability to travel.”
The artist, who has long angered the Chinese authorities with his outspoken politics and art, has not had a passport and has been barred from leaving the country since April 2011, when he was detained for 81 days on charges of tax evasion.
His detention came the day after a major exhibition, “The Art of the Enlightenment,” financed by German companies and organizations and the German government, opened in Beijing. In the aftermath, some members of the German Parliament called for the exhibition to be shut down, saying it was ironic that the prominent artist should be detained so close to a major arts event that celebrated tolerance and humanism, according to the German television and radio station Deutsche Welle. The show remained open.
Mr. Ai is still exhibiting outside China, including in the former prison on Alcatraz Island in California.
The exhibition, which will open in September, will mark the first time the former penitentiary has been used to show the works of a major contemporary artist. Mr. Ai said he had never visited Alcatraz but was interested in exploring conditions in which individuals are stripped of basic human rights: “The idea of loss of freedom as a punishment raises philosophical questions,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ai is also participating in overseas events via video message. On Jan. 31 he will take part that way in a discussion at Transmediale, a festival of digital culture in Berlin, titled: “The Chinese Dream: The Doctrine and the Sexy.” (This writer will also be speaking.)
