Too "problematic" for the retrospective
ARTinvestment.RU   23 февраля 2011

China has canceled a major exhibition of artist-dissident Aya Weiwei

In March this year at the Beijing Center for Contemporary Art Ullensa (UCCA) was to open the country's first major retrospective of the famous painter, one of the sponsors stadium "Bird's Nest» Aya Weiwei (AiWeiwei) . But last week, Hay said that the exhibition would not be.

According to the artist, now is not the best time to organize a retrospective and administration of the Center believes that "the political situation this does not have" . Agence France-Presse quoted the Director of Public Relations Leigh (Vivienne Lee), according to which the center does not want to get involved in the conflict with the authorities cooperating with the "problem" by the artist. Ai Weiwei is known as an outspoken critic of the Communist Party, which has repeatedly had to suffer for their activities: in 2009 he was beaten by police, and has recently been demolished his Shanghai shop ...

As for" no better time, "that this cause is very vague: perhaps the case in the recent mass uprising in the Middle East. It is known that the Communist Party of China recently blocked some sites search for the word "Egypt". The authorities have inserted Ayu spokes in the wheel if he was going to leave the country during important world events. Last year, for example, refused to release him from the country when another well-known dissident, imprisoned writer and activist Liu Xiaobo (Liu Xiaobo), in absentia awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

There are also a high probability that the abolition of the exhibition is associated with decision of the founder of the Center Ullensa Guy (Guy Ullens) to withdraw from the Chinese art scene and to sell his collection at auction . Ullens was one of the first Western collectors, who began to invest in contemporary Chinese art, he now wants to concentrate on collecting works by young Indian artists.

material was prepared by Julia Maksimova, AI

Sources: artinfo.com , artinvestment.ru