Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Gives The Middle Finger To The IOC – The HuffPost

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OLYMPIC GAMES – A key figure in freedom of expression in the artistic world, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei once again challenges the institutions with a middle finger, this time addressed to the International Olympic Committee.

The Swiss newspaper Le Temps unveils on its front page this Saturday, February 12 the new Éperspective study of the Chinese artist who still denounces a symbol of power. In a gesture combining artistic and political, he reaffirms “his disdain for an institution which has put itself at the service of Chinese propaganda”, details the Swiss newspaper which met him in Lausanne as part of an interview in the middle of from Beijing Winter Olympics.

But this middle finger to the IOC, which should not be seen as a simple vulgar attack, is in fact one of the trademarks of Ai Weiwei who has already made this gesture in the past in front of many places symbolizing power. . Tiananmen Square, in 1995, he had for the first time made this gesture towards the portrait of Mao Zedong. Subsequently, he had notably reproduced this gesture in Washington, Paris, Hong Kong and even on the Federal Square, as reminds him The weather.

Harassed in his country of originlike his father (the poet Ai Qing) before him, Ai Weiwei was eventually forced into exile by the Chinese regime and has lived for seven years in Europe where he continues to practice. his committed art.

Since his arrival in Europe, he has extended his fight by attacking, among other things, European migration policies. But this new gesture in the middle of the Olympic Games in his native country reaffirms his denunciation of the faults of the societies of the West of its democracies ready to compromise with authoritarian regimes like that of China in the name of money.

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