Over
the summer, I was over my friend Harris’ house and we got into some sort of
conversation regarding the wronging’s of society. He then asked if I had
ever heard of this guy, “Ai Weiwei”. I
had never heard of him in my entire life, so he went on to the Internet and
pulled up a documentary of him called, “Never Sorry”. We watched the entire film, and every second of it was incredible.
Ai Weiwei is a political
activist who peacefully protests for human rights and against ridiculous laws
made by the Chinese government. He does this through his art and photography.
Because he speaks out against the Chinese government he's constantly
beaten by police, arrested, put under house arrest, having websites of his shut
down and art studios of his destroyed.
Over
five thousand students died in an earthquake in China (2009). Ai Weiwei gathered
one backpack to represent each student, and wrote his or her name on it. He
took over 9,000 backpacks and arranged them into a pattern on a city wall
because the government refused to take responsibly for not taking proper
precautions for the earthquake. If they had taken proper precautions, more lives would have been saved. Another
example of Ai Weiwei’s art is not to long ago he photographed himself nude
except used a stuffed animal as a “fig leaf”. He did this because it was
artistically interesting but also to basically curse against the Chinese government
for not providing enough human rights to their country. He was arrested after
this as well.
If
the government shuts down a website he just creates another one. After his art
studios are destroyed he creates more. Whenever the police beat him he takes
pictures of it on his cell phone and posts it to the Internet. At one point policemen
beat him so harshly over the head that he had to have emergency brain surgery. But
he continues to risk his life to rebel against the government through his art. Nothing stops him from standing up for what he
believes in, and he’s encouraged by most of the Chinese population for his
work.
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| "She lived happily for seven years" |
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