Conversation between AI Weiwei and Sigismond de Vajay
3 August 2017
Fundación Corpartes
Rosario Norte 660, Nivel -2, Las Condes, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Taking advantage of a research trip we made in Chile with Ai Weiwei, on Thursday, August 3rd, we held a talk at the CorpArtes Foundation with the Argentine-Swiss artist and curator Sigismond de Vajay. Both talked about Ai Weiwei’s latest projects and his participation in Of Bridges & Borders in Valparaíso.
Precisely, the first time that Chile received the artist’s work was in 2013 – when he could not yet leave China – his work “To Pablo”, an installation that consisted of a large 900 square meter canvas with a satellite image of the Senkaku Islands, in dispute between China and Japan, which was installed on the facade of the former gallery of prisoners in the Cultural Park of Valparaiso. On that image was printed in Chinese and Spanish a fragment of the poem “Cabo de Chile” by Ai Qing, father of the artist and old friend Pablo Neruda.
The work was managed in Chile in the context of the exhibition Bridges & Borders that was curated by the Argentine-Swiss Sigismond de Vajay, a project produced by Kültur Büro Buenos Aires.
For this occasion, Weiwei and de Vajay talked at length about the artist’s latest projects and especially about his memories of Chile, through his father, and about his documentary film on migration, “Human Flow”, which was about to be released at the Venice Film Festival in September of the same year.
More about Of Bridges & Borders
