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An exhibition of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei is by a London gallery cancelled after Ai posted a tweet about Israel’s war against Palestine. In that tweet, Ai wrote that the Western world’s guilt about the Holocaust is being abused to disrupt the Arab world.
In the tweet, which has since been deleted, Ai further wrote:
“Financially, culturally, and in terms of media influence, the Jewish community has always had significant influence in the United States. The $3 billion annual aid package to Israel has been hailed for decades as one of the most valuable investments the United States has ever made. This partnership is often described as a collaboration in a shared destiny.”
Ai has said that his exhibition at London’s Lisson Gallery has since been “effectively cancelled”. That decision was said to have been made “to avoid further disputes and for my own well-being.” According to a spokesperson for the gallery, it is “not the right time to present his new works” and there is no room for a “debate that could be characterized as anti-Semitic”.
According to Ai Weiwei, the cancellation of his exhibition raises questions about freedom of expression: “If we cannot use simple ways to express a complicated question, does that mean that the expression becomes redundant, or that the so-called ‘incorrect ‘ expression becomes redundant? This is a fundamental aspect of free speech. For someone who works in art, expression has never been about looking for the right expression.”
Ai was born in Beijing in 1957 and grew up in labor camps in northwestern China after the exile of his father, the poet Ai Qing. Throughout his career, he was an outspoken critic of the Chinese authorities and an advocate for human rights. Ai fled China permanently in 2011 and has since lived alternately in the United Kingdom and Portugal. He has often spoken out for the Palestinians in the past. In 2016 he traveled to Gaza to film Human Flow, a documentary about the global refugee crisis.
2023-11-15 19:55:26
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