HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE DISRUPTOR
somewhere between 20 and 60
stray cats and dogs have made his
studio their home.
“We started to say, ‘Oh we
can have them!’ Ai laughs with
his eyes, as if his decision
bemuses him.
This day, a soft white cat
named Lei Lei (“come, come” in
Chinese) wanders into the room
and onto the table for a nap. “He’s
never missed one interview. I
think he likes the human voice
while he sleeps. ‘Lei lei, lei lei,’”
Ai calls, whistling softly. Dressed
in a white t-shirt and jeans, Ai’s
defining features dominate his
appearance — a globular belly and
stringy beard that hangs low.
“You’re not asking what I did,
you’re just asking where I am.
Right?” Ai continues, wondering aloud why no one spoke
up. “If your cat is lost you ask,
‘where is this cat’?”
Ai’s lost cat analogy makes
sense only if the Chinese art
community accepted him as
readily as he does cats. Or if
there were a Chinese art community to speak of (Ai insists there’s
not). But his relationship with
China’s leading artists is as complicated by politics as his art.
“The other artists have never
“BEFORE
LOVING AI WEIWEI, YOU
NEED TO BE A FREEDOM
LOVER. THAT’S WHY NOT
EVERYONE LOVES HIM.”
liked Weiwei, and I believe it is
mutual,” Joan Lebold Cohen, a
Chinese art historian and associate of the Fairbank Center for
Chinese Studies at Harvard, told
Huffington. “They all do very different things and see the world,
especially the propaganda branch
[of the government], differently.
They don’t understand him well
and realize he is a troublemaker
with wide support in the art
world outside of China.”
Cohen, who is also a friend of
Ai’s, puts it this way: “They are
jealous and resentful.” In articles
and interviews, his detra