
Ai Weiwei
It seems Avant Arte are knocking it out of the park again! This time it's available by lottery here.
The edition is a wall mounted sculpture of a surveillance camera in cut aluminium.
As a man who was heavily surveilled in his life the sculpture is deeply meaningful. At what point does surveillance become control? The CCTV camera is a symbol of power. that Ai has used before, most notably in the form of marble sculptures. In other works he turned the camera on the people from the secret police who followed him.
Having been born into the surveillance state that is China, Weiwei knocked heads with the authorities many times... it culminated in his studio being knocked down without warning and 81 days imprisonment that was put down to 'financial irregularities'.
To Be Looked At… takes the form of a bank of CCTV cameras, pointing in multiple directions for uninterrupted vision. The sculpture can be mounted on a wall or displayed on a horizontal surface.
Installed in homes around the world, the cameras and their pseudo-surveillance embody Weiwei’s wry humour. At the same time, they encapsulate an experience that has become an inescapable part of being alive.