Cahiers d’Art – Ai Wei Wei

This new edition of the Cahiers d’Art Revue was published to accompany Ai Weiwei’s (born 1957) 2019 exhibition at the Galerie Cahiers d’Art on rue du Dragon in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The issue features a series of unpublished works on paper made from rust, documentation of Ai Weiwei's gigantic Amazon rain-forest project, a long interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist, an essay by art historian Ingrid D. Rowland on Ai Weiwei and archaeology, a tribute to the artist’s father, the famous writer Ai Qing, and a text by the collector Uli Sigg. The issue sheds light on the concerns that lie at the heart of Ai Weiwei’s work: antiquity and contemporaneity, East and West, traditional arts and conceptual art, conservation and destruction. As the artist says, “We can replace everything except the past.” Also featured are recent works and projects by Andrea Eriksson, Jonya Ishigami and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian.