Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale

Fairytale is a project of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei which consists three installations, Template, 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs and 1001 Chinese Visitors. This project has been presented in Documenta 12 in 2007 and claimed to be one of the most ambitious projects that have ever been presented in the history of Documenta. Template is a large-scaled installation comprised of late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden windows and doors, which were formerly part of the destroyed houses in the Shanxi area. 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs is an installation that spread these 1001 chairs around the different exhibition venues during the Documenta.

Besides the two object-based installations, 1001 Chinese Visitors is a living installation involving 1001 Chinese citizens who visited the small town of Kassel (population 194,796) in a trip fully designed by Ai Weiwei. The 1001 Chinese travelers were tourists, viewers as well as part of the artwork. They were divided into five groups, each group traveling in succession between June 12 and July 9, 2007, and were selected from more than 3,000 people who enthusiastically reacted to the travel offer application published by Ai Weiwe on his personal blog over a three-day period. Ai was able to initiate an enormous process with several different aspects, including: the planning of the tourist and educational activities, the location of suitable infrastructures, the creation of proper living and sanitary conditions, the design of a specially created travel-set (luggage, clothes, computer related technology, etc.) and the recruiting of personnel (cooks, video makers, photographers, etc.), the processing of visa applications, the purchase of flight tickets, and travel insurance.


What interested me are the multiple layers underneath the project. It is very political and provocative in the context of global vs. local. For general public in China, globalization means unprecedented opportunities not only on a national level but also on individual level. “Traveling abroad”, especially referring to western countries, has long been a “dream” for a lot of Chinese people. It is a popular term in modern time, which reflects an obvious western-centralization ideology. People in China not only are curious about west but also refer west as a model. This “dream” has gradually come true due to the greatly improvement of personal economic situations. It is now very common to see a large Chinese tourism group in western cities buying luxury products. However, this kind of dream is like a fairytale to most Chinese people who are from rural areas. Ironically, as Ai mentioned, for villagers who participated in this project, traveling to Germany has no difference from traveling to Moon. These contradictions precisely reflect the current situations of China – great gap between poor and rich caused by incongruous development.

The other issue brought by globalization is the problem of identity accompanied by the immigration phenomenon. Before a Chinese can travel abroad, he/she must be issued a visa. The application process is extremely complicated since every western century assumes Chinese travelers have immigration tendency. The process of acquiring visas for 1001 Chinese citizen within couple days was a very provocative action that generated some kind of panic for the German embassy in Beijing. Globalization brings us certain freedom but this freedom has its strict limitation. There is always a system behind it. The process of applying visa made people realize what it means to be a man or woman and a Chinese. Fairytale was a gesture of challenging and questioning this system as well as an implication of destroying and threatening the system.

As a Chinese student live and study in a foreign country, I personally experienced these physical process and psychological changes. The notion of identity has never been so notable for me both culturally and politically. This makes me interested in art practice and exhibitions that focus on urban phenomenon and trans-culture issues. How to connect global and local without misinterpret the context also makes me rethink my curatorial practice and serves as an important direction for my future career.