Ai WeiWei, Safe Passage (2016) — Art and Migration Virtual Exhibition Tour

Ai Weiwei (Born 1957 in Beijing)
Safe Passage, 2016
Life Vests
Courtesy the artist and negerriemschneider, 柏林

As part of the exhibition “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Art and Migration,” Mia invited artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei to install the monumental work Safe Passage on Mia’s iconic McKim, Mead & White-designed neoclassical façade.

This work consists of thousands of life jackets that were worn by refugees—primarily those fleeing war in Syria and Afghanistan—making the dangerous sea journey from Turkey to Greece in 2015–16. 在 2016 the discarded life jackets were recovered and donated to the artist by the mayor of Lesbos. To put the scale of this crisis into perspective, the United Nations Human Rights Council estimated more than 856,000 people arrived by sea to Greece in 2015 獨自的, with approximately 800 dead or missing that year.

The artwork itself commemorates all the refugees who undertook the dangerous passage across the Mediterranean Sea, but it does not distinguish between those who perished and those who survived. Nor does it give insight into the harsh realities that greeted the refugees after their journey.

Speaking about the plight of refugees globally, Ai Weiwei has stated, “There’s no refugee crisis, only a human crisis. . . . When people talk about refugees, the words used are ‘they,’ ‘us,’ or ‘them.’ The moment of realization that we are part of them, and they are part of us, is the moment when we can begin to effect change.”

new.artsmia.org/when-home-wont-let-you-stay-art-and-migration/