Interrogating the limits of humanitarian art: the uncomfortable invitations of Ai Weiwei

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to engage the so-called ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015. His work spans several mediums, from feature-length documentary films to gallery exhibits, public installations, and social media content. Ai has garnered both admiration and criticism for his representations of migrants and refugees, with some critics alleging Ai’s works are tone-deaf and self-serving publicity stunts that disregard the uneven power dynamics between the artist and his subjects. These critiques, however, often overlook Ai’s postcolonial positionality and the ways in which his own experiences with exile shape his approach to representing mass displacement. In this essay, I offer a reappraisal of Ai Weiwei’s work by considering how his documentary practices productively discomfit viewers and invite audiences to interrogate the limitations of humanitarian art. Through close readings of his documentary film Human Flow (2017), gallery installation Laundromat (2016), and the notorious India Today portrait of Ai Weiwei as Alan Kurdi, I show how Ai destabilizes humanitarian documentary tropes typically used to represent refugees. In doing so, Ai calls attention to the constructed nature of his own work and invites viewers to re-examine their practices of looking.