Russian bombs are falling in Ukraine. China is flexing its military power in the Taiwan Straits. Migrants repeatedly die at sea as smugglers’ boats sink. The Earth is warming, creating droughts, collapsing glaciers and triggering violent storms. The pandemic persists. “We talk about many, many things. We talk about migrants, about deaths, about war, about many, many issues,” Ai told The Associated Press in Venice on Friday. He stands next to his 9-metre (29.5 ft) long, almost 3-tonne black glass sculpture, which hangs above the central nave of the deconsecrated church of San Giorgio Maggiore, across from St Mark’s Square in of Venice. Titled “The Human Comedy: Memento Mori,” the sculpture is the centerpiece of an exhibition by Ai at the church that opens Sunday. The massive hanging artwork is part chandelier, part ossuary, with elaborately suspended glass skeletons and skulls, both human and animal, balanced by blown-glass human organs and scattered likenesses of Twitter’s bird logo and surveillance cameras, suggesting the dark side of technology. “We see the environment completely disappearing, destroyed by human effort… and that will create a much greater destruction or famine. Or war, there is a potential political struggle between China and the West” as China asserts greater control over Hong Kong and threatens control over Taiwan, Ai said. “We need to rethink people and legitimacy in the environment. Do we really deserve this planet or are we just that short-sighted and racist? And very, very simply demanding, selfishness,” added the artist. The exhibition also features smaller glass sculptures. One depicts Ai himself as a prisoner, a reference to the months he spent in a Chinese prison in 2011. Another imposes his disfigured face on a copy of an 18th-century statue titled “Allegory of Envy.” A wooden sculpture of a tree trunk fills a sacristy. Colored glass hard hats save seats in the choir. Lego brick portrait replicas of famous paintings and the Chinese zodiac line the walls of adjacent rooms. Ai said he believed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave Chinese authorities a “potential model” to understand how such an operation might play out in Taiwan, without serving as either an encouragement or a warning. “I think China is part of the global power struggle that reflects our modern understanding and the classical understanding of territory and who has the right to do what,” he said. “What’s happening in the Russia-Ukraine conflict gives China a clear perhaps mental exercise about what they want to do in Taiwan if necessary.” But the artist says any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of Taiwan’s history. “Chinese people think that Taiwan belongs to China, but in reality China and Taiwan have been separate for over 70 years. They have their own social structure, which is more democratic and more peaceful than in China,” he said. Any moves by China to claim Taiwan by force will result in “the final struggle”. He sees the struggle in China as a struggle for the legitimacy of the authorities’ control, while the challenge in the West is the constant need to defend democracy and with it freedom of speech. The West’s Achilles heel is its economic dependence on China’s cheap manufacturing, he said. “That’s why China is so confident,” Ai said. “They know the West cannot live without China.” He cited instances of Western hypocrisy, including the rejection by festivals in Europe and the United States of films he made during the pandemic depicting the first lockdown of Wuhan and the struggles in Hong Kong. After praising the films, festivals eventually give “the final word, we can’t show them,” for fear of losing access to the Chinese market, Ai said. His works travel more smoothly, he said, because his artistic language is more difficult to interpret. “My job involves a new vocabulary, so it’s difficult for someone who has no knowledge at all. It requires study,” Ai said. “I don’t do a piece to please the audience. But I always want to say something that is necessary.” Tourists who wandered in from the water bus were thrilled to stumble upon an exhibit by the famous dissident artist. “Is it metal? When I first saw it, I thought it represented hell,” said Kenneth Cheung, a Hong Kong native now living in Toronto, Canada, as he viewed the imposing glass sculpture. “Being in a church, it’s even stronger, stronger.” The main sculpture took three years to realize with the help of artists in a glass studio in Murano using three techniques: traditional blown Murano glass, wax molds and injection molds. Studio owner Adriano Berengo said he pursued Ai for years to secure a collaboration with an artist he admires for his strong political beliefs. “He shows his face. He’s not hiding. He is ready to risk his life, and he did it in China,” Berengo said. The exhibition will run until November 27 in Venice. From there, the hanging sculpture will go to the Design Museum in London and then hopefully to a buyer, Berengo said. “It must be a big museum. Otherwise, how can you keep such a work of art?’ he said.
