Ai Weiwei vs. Lego: Canadian gallery joins collection drive

A seemingly casual remark by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to a gathering in Berlin over the weekend was not lost on the audience, who got his sly dig.

“Oh it’s not a Lego he’s holding,” remarked Ai dryly to the delight of the crowd in the auditorium Sunday night at the city’s prestigious art university, the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK).

The artist, who had just begun a guest teaching stint at UdK and is now based out of Berlin, has launched a very public battle with Danish toy company Lego. At the UdK talk, other artist professors were invited to ask Ai some questions — one presented him with a photo in which a man was shown holding a puppet.

About a week ago, the dissident artist revealed on his Twitter account that Lego had refused his massive order for bricks for his upcoming project at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

In response, on his Instagram account, Ai posted a shot of some Lego bricks in a toilet.

One week later, at least six galleries around the world have created collection points for the bricks after Ai made a call for them to be dropped off in BMW cars. Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario jumped on board over the weekend, joining the likes of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) in Paris, the Brooklyn Museum and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. There is also a BMW collection car parked outside his Beijing headquarters.

“Freedom of expression is a core value for public art museums,” the AGO said in a statement. “We will always vigorously defend an artist’s right to express him or herself.”

The gallery, located in downtown Toronto, hosted a 2013 exhibit by the artist — “Ai Weiwei: According to What?”. The AGO hasn’t set up the collection car yet and is expected to announce a collection start date very soon.

‘Political agenda’

Ai, who is an active critic of the Chinese government and was jailed for almost three months in 2011 for tax crimes, said the company had told him it was against its corporate policy to “indicate our approval of any unaffiliated activities outside the Lego licensing program.”

In statements subsequently released to the media, Lego was more specific saying that it refrained from “actively engaging in or endorsing the use of Lego bricks in projects or contexts of political agenda.”

For a project last year at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, “Trace,” Ai used 1.2 million Legos to make mosaic portraits of political exiles or prisoners of conscience, including Chelsea Manning, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In that instance, the bricks had been bought by a foundation and not the artist’s studio in Beijing.

This time, he plans to use the toy bricks to re-create his 1995 triptych, “Dropping a Hang Dynasty Urn,” and to do portraits of 20 Australian human rights and freedom of information proponents, including Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

Ai has accused Lego of “censorship and discrimination” and compared its refusal for his order of several million bricks to a company selling pens and telling a writer that he or she can’t do political writing.

Lego’s refusal isn’t new. Back in 1996, it tried to prevent Polish artist Zbigniew Libera from creating his Lego Concentration Camp Set.

As for using the toy bricks, Ai has said his son (who lives in Berlin with his mother) plays with Lego.

Last year, Lego began building a factory in Jiaxing, about 100 kilometres southwest of Shanghai, which is expected to be running in 2017 with 2,000 employees.

“Asia — including China — is a future core market for the Lego Group,” said the 2013 announcement about the factory on the company’s website.

“With the new production site including moulding, decoration and packaging facilities it will have a supply base for future growth in Asia. Lego Group sales in the region have grown by more than 50 per cent annually in recent years.”

Joy of construction

At the sold-out talk in Berlin, Ai spoke about his joy of construction — becoming a self-taught architect and designing and building his own studio and constructing about 60 houses in the past six years. He helped design the Bird’s Nest Stadium for the Beijing Olympics.

“I like using my hands. I like the mud and the bricks,” he explained.

Of the many questions posed during his 80-minute talk, Ai was prompted to reflect on the nature of art.

“It’s about freedom of communication,” he declared triggering a vigorous round of applause.

“Art is for deep meaning,” he went on. “How we behave and how we define ourselves as human beings.”