美国国家公共电台 NPR 'They Love Freedom': Ai Weiwei On His Lego Portraits Of Fellow Activists

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

A few years ago, the artist Ai Weiwei made Lego portraits of activists¹ and political prisoners from around the world. They were on display at Alcatraz. At the time, Ai Weiwei was under house arrest in China and he couldn't travel to the historic prison to see them. He has his passport back now, so he came here to Washington to attend a new show of those portraits at the Hirshhorn Museum. NPR's Elizabeth Blair went with him.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE²: Ai Weiwei documents everything. As soon as he walks in the gallery, he pulls out his iPhone and starts Instagramming his own work.

AI WEIWEI: When I had the chance to make this show, I'm still in self - detention³ myself.

BLAIR: Ai Weiwei has had several confrontations⁴ with Chinese authorities. Once he was beaten so badly by police he had to have brain surgery. He was under house arrest in 2011 when his friend and art dealer⁵ Cheryl Haines went to visit him in Beijing to find out what she could do to support him.

CHERYL HAINES: His answer was merely make my work available to a broader audience.

BLAIR: It was Haines and her organization FOR-SITE that worked with Ai Weiwei long-distance to create the installation at Alcatraz, a collection of portraits of political prisoners and free speech activists.

HAINES: In depicting⁶ them, it was very difficult in some cases to find any imagery. We had to go online. And a lot of the photographs of these people were very pixelated.

BLAIR: Ai Weiwei got the idea to capture that pixelated feel of the images using Legos.

AI: So I start to borrow my son's Lego to construct some images.

BLAIR: Haines had Lego bricks sent to Ai Weiwei's studio in China.

HAINES: I actually had to carry quite a lot of them in suitcases with me because somehow getting the Legos shipped to Beijing from the factory seemed incredibly complicated.

BLAIR: After several trips back and forth⁷, Ai Weiwei sent digital designs for the portraits to Haines in San Francisco, where they were assembled by a team of volunteers. The show opened at Alcatraz in 2014. Nearly a million people attended. Now the portraits are at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and Ai Weiwei can finally walk through the door.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: You ready to go upstairs?

AI: I'm all ready. You just have to lead me.

BLAIR: How you feeling about seeing this for the first time?

AI: It's like sometimes I feel like a newly born baby. Everything's so fresh.

BLAIR: The art that Ai Weiwei is coming to fresh is spread out on the floor. One hundred and seventy-six portraits arranged in groups, almost like vibrantly⁸ colored quilts. The people in them are from all over the world - Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, the United States, China and elsewhere. Each of them have been detained, exiled or sought political asylum⁹.

AI: They lost their freedom because they love freedom. They love freedom for other people and they love freedom for their nation.

BLAIR: Ai Weiwei sees it as his responsibility to introduce them and their struggles for freedom to the rest of the world. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Washington.

1 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

4 confrontations   

n.对抗，对抗的事物( confrontation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• At times, this potential has escalated into actual confrontations. 有时，这一矛盾升级为实际的对抗。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法
• These confrontations and uncertainties were bing played out for the first time on a global scale. 所有这一切对抗和不稳定，第一次在全球范围内得到充分的表演。 来自辞典例句

5 dealer   

n.商人，贩子

参考例句：

• The dealer spent hours bargaining for the painting.那个商人为购买那幅画花了几个小时讨价还价。
• The dealer reduced the price for cash down.这家商店对付现金的人减价优惠。

6 depicting   

描绘，描画( depict的现在分词 )； 描述

参考例句：

• a painting depicting the Virgin and Child 一幅描绘童贞马利亚和圣子耶稣的画
• The movie depicting the battles and bloodshed is bound to strike home. 这部描写战斗和流血牺牲的影片一定会取得预期效果。

7 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

8 vibrantly   

参考例句：

• Notice that each center is vibrantly multi-colored with no shade predominating. 注意每个中心是多颜色振动毫无遮蔽控制。
• There are so many reptiles to discover in this vibrantly colored nature book of hide-and-seek. 这本书主要介绍了爬虫类动物如何利用保护色来保护自己。

9 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。