Ai Wei Wei and Protest

Ai Wei Wei is well known for his political activism, beginning in his early studies in New York during the 90's but flourishing during the early 2000's. Returning to China after discovering his fathers failing condition Wei Wei began to live with his parents, continuing to practice his art despite the lack of intrest many had in his work. Then in 2008 a tragedy happend that rocked the citizens of China, an earthquake had occurred in Sichuan killing around 80,000 people. Ai Wei Wei's reaction to such an incident drove him to strive for justice, stateting in an interview "Sichuan had an earthquake
It was devastating: more than 80,000 lives disappeared. Many of the dead were young people at school and university. I’d been writing a daily blog – about modern Chinese society, the government and art – but I stopped suddenly. People asked me why but, faced with such a tragedy, I was silenced. I couldn’t find the right vocabulary." The Chinese government  had controlled and censored any and all information about the incident, from the damage to even the death toll, leading many people outside of Sichuan having little to no information believing what little information the government had given people, downplaying the tragedy by stating the death toll was as low as 500. Many of the deaths in the earthquake were children and teenagers attending school like any other day, what Ai Wei Wei found the most interesting about the fact is the first building to collapse were the schools, these schools were built and funded by the government and should've been up to standard, meaning that the school should still be somewhat there and not a pile of rubble.

Ai Wei Wei, Remembering.

It's clear the the Chinese government is trying to keep a lid on the fact that when constructing these school building they did some shady dealings, not enforcing the infrastructure, and risking hundreds of children's lives all for the sake of money. To spread the truth to the people of China Ai Wei Wei created a team of volunteers to help in the gathering of all the people who died in the even, Ai Wei Wei recounts these events in his interview "Over the months, members of our team were arrested many times. Police would confiscate their belongings, delete the names they’d written down and erase photos. But we stayed determined and sent new people in. After almost a year of research, we had 5,219 names. Eventually, the government shut off the blog because there were too many people reading it and following us. “All I want is to let the world remember she had been living happily for seven years.” This beautiful little girl was just the same as any other: she liked to dance, to sing. But suddenly – because of the negligence of the government, the corruption in construction – there wasn’t a safe building for her to go to school in." This work was titled Remembering, and with all Wei Wei's and his teams social and political investigations, it was about how, in Chinese society, with censorship and control, individuals can still take action to defend their very, very fragile rights. It was also the culmination of all the years on the internet, blogging since 2005, till his blog was inevitably shut down by the government after the collection of the 5,219 names. However this did not stop Ai Wei Wei's dealings and voice on the internet, moving to twitter to expose the ruthlessness of the Chinese government.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/15/ai-weiwei-remembering-sichuan-earthquake