Deciphering, analysis, advise

Sign of change

China : Internal Dissident Struggles

Contemporary Art | Art of Change : new directions from China at the Hayward Gallery in London has formed the object of a lively controversy launched by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. In an article from the Guardian dated 10/09/12, he accuses the organisers of having put on a consumerist exhibition of contemporary Chinese art whilst positioning his dissident activities as the only possible course of action. Through the presentation of nine artists, the curator Stefanie Rosenthal offers a perspective on a truly experimental and avant-gardist strain of current Chinese art that resists the aesthetic sirens of the global market. Paul Glastone responds to Aï Weiwei in the digital Anglo-Chinese magazine Randian, highlighting the fact that he is the Chinese artist who is most in the Western public eye. A murky game and debates more complex than those allowed for by the Western romanticised vision of Aï Weiwei.